Cave Seven: Enlightenment 

Wherein the Goddess pulls down Her panties. 

She ungirds Her loins for what leaves and what enters. 

One knows She might now be penetrated. 

...you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows... Bb Dylan 

1. 

Contentedness  

I saw Jennifer's target list. She had an eighty-five percent match with my own secret list, which I made up in advance. I think I'll just let her alone to fight her war. I'm glad to see that she's taken to the job. I had to clear her personally with the System to know what war materiel we have, and where. Nobody else knows. I'm afraid, with the delicacy of our position, that we can't have any ex-generals walking around. I fear what might have happened had Jennifer washed out somehow. I love that girl, but I am dedicated to a cause. I will not let anything happen to my Sisterhood on the eve of our triumph. We have a good general now. I will bet my life she can do the job. 

* * * 

2. 

Expectation  

The Incarnation's plan of battle was uncomplicated. First we destroy military satellites, so the enemy could not use them to spy on our operations. Then we destroy all the world's military aircraft on the ground, removing the greatest threat to our airship fleets. At this point we would enjoy total air supremacy. We would offer favorable terms to all the world's governments; those refusing to capitulate would suffer demolition in detail of their military installations at our leisure. 

The beauty of the scheme is that our enemy would never have a target to retaliate against. They would know they were attacked by airships, but they would never be able to find an airship base or factory. They would never be able to stick a pin in a globe and say where in the world our attacks originated. There would be no front lines to assault, no Brders through which they could send incursions, no enemy capital to name in their propaganda. Our ships would all rise at once from hidden launch sites in mountainous areas, and each of them would stay aloft for essentially the duration. They would congregate for operational reasons or for resupply and then disperse, but never in any pattern which could be easily linked to any of our ground bases. The enemy would not know where we were coming from, or really who we were, until it was too late for that information to do them any good. 

Neutralizing the enemies' eyes in the sky was the critical part of the plan. Modern warfare had become completely dependent on radar and metal jets. None of our ships could be seen on radar of any frequency. We could be seen with the naked eye, and by infrared. If we kept our ships in cloud banks, then for all practical purposes we could remain invisible. Drifting with clouds would keep our engines cold and our envelope at the ambient temperature, greatly decreasing our infrared brilliance. Easing down out of a cloud at night, only sheer idiot luck could spot us before we opened up with our ferocious firepower. I could see right away we had a shot at success. 

Before jumping to any such conclusion, I took stock of our arsenal and woman power resources. The Incarnation had Bosted a black weapons platform from Moon to the trailing lunar equilateral. It made me nervous sitting out there in the open, where a snoopy astronomer might get curious any one of these nights about inexplicable occultations. I felt it had to be used soon, or else be dropped back on Moon. From here it was tiny and black, but still a finite risk of discovery. It held our big bruisers, half a gross of clean fusion Bmbs, plus all the hardware to clean out the birds. I asked the System how long it would take us to neutralize all satellites in polar orbit, and it said about four days from button push. I reminded System that some of those birds could move around some, and it said it knew that. I figured that part was under control. 

The big bruisers were radar and optically black. There would be no detection until they were literally right on top of their targets, screaming out their last few seconds through the thin cushion of atmosphere. I calculated the air-burst height to crunch the maximum number of parked airplanes; it varied with how the jets or helicopters were arranged around the air bases. We had fourteen six-meg warheads, and fifty- eight weighing in at half meg each. Six megs was overkill for even hardened air bases, but I dug around and found places to target ten of them. Big bases, not too close to big towns. I whimsically decided to use the last four for an experiment in well-drilling, right on top of the big hardened NORAD center in Colorado. I figured slamming them in at four-hundred millisecond intervals would be about right to keep any solid stuff from the last explosion from dropping back into the hole, while giving the shock wave a chance to dissipate enough to be slightly less substantial than a brick wall. I wasn't sure we could actually reach the installation itself, but I was willing to bet my whip that nothing and nobody would ever come back out of that hole. The Bttom should fill with liquid glass, and lots of it. 

So after that I just picked the fifty-eight airfields with the largest number of warplanes on them, and took the best-fit airburst height for each one, ignoring the presence of towns. The forests around some of the bases worried me more. I felt the chill of nuclear winter creep down my spine as I quizzed the System about the overall environmental effect of the Bmbardment. Maybe, said the System, half a dozen of the fires would be bad. I switched two of the big Bmbs from forested regions to bases in deserts and asked again. Maybe four or five of the fires would be bad. Well, we could help put out the fires that got really bad after a few days. We would be making lots of nitric acid the quick way, just by burning the ingredients of the air with one another. Not much help for that. 

No neutrons to speak of meant that induced secondary radionucleides would not be produced at all. The primary reaction produced exclusively alpha particles. Alpha particles are hard to take seriously. Most of them would be slowed enough by the air itself to grab up electrons and turn into hot helium. The whole neighborhood would be made very unhealthy for a microsecond by the X-ray flux, which would be bad. I shut the System up when it tried to tell me the details of the X-ray production. That's something I will have to get ready for. If these weapons are going to kill everybody in line of sight, I have to know the worst case. Just not right this minute. I had done my best to minimize smoke production, and air bursts would tend to kick up less dust than surface bursts. Besides, each Bmb would go off over asphalt or concrete, not over dirt. I had targeted all our thermonuclear devices, and was willing to call it a day. 

I learned that the breakthrough which had enabled us to build clean fusion Bmbs was in finding out we could reach the ignition temperature for the proton-Bron reaction with a combination of a chemical reaction, namely the recombination of atomic hydrogen, with the energy released by a collapsing magnetic field. This combination made up our notorious "chill Bmb", the only explosive device ever made with a probability of detonation equal to exactly one. We stuffed some atomic hydrogen into a really strong magnetic field at nearly no Kelvins. How? Very carefully, is how. 

Now atomic hydrogen is existentially unhappy stuff. It wants to get together with its neighbor hydrogen atom and make molecular hydrogen. It wants to do that real bad. Its desire for Bnding is so strong, that when it happens it's the most powerful chemical reaction there is. The most powerful chemical reaction, in fact, that there can be. But when it's in a strong enough magnetic field, it's willing to chill for a while. 

An interesting feature of the solenoids themselves is that they are partially composed of an unstable substance, metallic hydrogen. This is stuff which wants to liberate itself into a vapor phase. When that happens, the gas is guess what, none other than more atomic hydrogen, with the same lust for recombination and so forth. To restrain that tendency, the whiskers of metallic hydrogen are physically confined within a capillary tube of isotopic diamond. That captivity works only when there are no Kelvins around to speak of. This construction contributes enormously to the touchy, delicate nature of the weapon. Such things as sound waves, vibration and mechanical motion translate into thermal stresses within the refrigeration casing. They must be minimized by isolating the device as much as possible from the noisy, jostling real world. 

So when you have a bunch of atomic hydrogen trapped on magnetic lines of force inside the coils of a superconducting magnet, and everything stays cold, you have got a lot of potential energy inside. How much will depend ultimately on the strength of your superconductive material, how stiffly it can resist the compressive force of its own magnetic field. The more current you can jack into that coil, the stronger the field, and the more unhappy atomic hydrogen you can stuff in to chill. Speaking loosely, you can say that the amount of potential energy you can pack into one of these infernal devices is arbitrary. 

There are four and twenty ways you can get it to go off. Anything that fractures a solenoid or lets heat in will do. Dropping it from a height works splendidly. The actual detonation system uses exploding wires to sever the coils. The only thing you can't do is keep it from going off. Oh, in theory there is a way to dismantle the thing, but nobody has ever been willing to try. The warhead casing of course contains liquid helium, but normally the whole weapon is stored in a bath of liquid helium. Whenever we pull it out of that bath, we fire it off immediately every time. It detonates every time. Riding the same ship with chill Bmbs makes people nervous. Our hot Bmb is a tube containing solid hydrogen-rich diborane, wrapped in six tubes of coils which are joined at the ends to form a single chill Bmb, just folded around the diborane core. The six-tube chill Bmb implodes in on the diborane and ignites fusion, and that's all she wrote. The proton-Bron reaction yields only helium nuclei, alpha particles but no neutrons, thus we have a relatively clean thermonuclear weapon without need for a fission Bmb to trigger it. Because it uses a chill Bmb, the damn thing's a touchy, delicate, dangerous weapon. Danger is the name of the game in modern weaponry, I suppose. 

It crossed my mind that it might be wise to hold some fusion Bmbs in reserve, rather than expending them all at the first blow. Certainly our opposition would hold dozens or hundreds of times as many thermonuclear weapons as we could field. But I determined that this idle thought was of no value. If ever we were backed into such a corner that only the use of H-Bmbs could help us, our strategy would be a failure in any event. We could only win if our enemy failed to pinpoint any particular location on the surface of the globe as a target for ICBM's, or really any kind of military response at all. 

That night just before sleeping I briefly reviewed my ethical stance. I could find in myself no trace of compunction toward fulfilling my divine commission. There was nothing to be found among the artifacts of our society more demonstrably evil than this machinery of death I meant to destroy. As to the persons whose lives I would take in consequence, for the most part they had devoted themselves to tending these engines of repression, or were attendant on persons who did. None among them could claim innocence, save only those who were compelled into proximity to this weaponry by coercion, like the children and prisoners who would die at my hands for residing on an air base. The despicable cowardice of this society had created these anonymous efficient bludgeons of war, which were meant to swiftly kill people too far away to be seen. At the bidding of the Goddess, I meant to deprive the oppressors of the world of this most effective instrumentality. This planet would be cleaner without jet fighters and helicopter gun ships, and the persons who stayed too near to such aircraft. I would cleanse it without a qualm. 

On awakening, I wasted little time before resuming with a review of our other major weapons systems. Of the chill Bmbs, we had stockpiled an indeterminate number, something between oodles and scads. The exact yield of this device was variable according to its thermal history, depending on how much atomic hydrogen its little brain had found necessary to bleed off during storage. It ranged from twenty to eighty tons of TNT equivalent. That was enough to crack the keel and burst the hull of the largest aircraft carrier with a near miss, but with magnetometer guidance the thought of missing such a target was absurd. A truly formidable tactical weapon, but its very power made application somewhat awkward. Its use against an individual missile, aircraft or tank was to my way of thinking too expensive, except in a defensive emergency. Of course, its first application would be in clearing airfields, for which it was ideally suited. I envisioned its further applications in cratering the odd SAM site, and crunching up warships. Perhaps it could be used to slap away interceptors flying in formation, or great concentrations of armor. 

The chill Bmbs were stored in unattended magazines, in some really isolated places. Under lots of ice, or under lots of sand. Little tubes leading almost to the surface gradually bled off a little cold helium, a little cold hydrogen, a little cold nitrogen. If the magazine ran low on any of these materials, or low on electric power, it would squawk by radio, just about two days before it didn't matter any more. Unless you are fond of really big holes. The fierce little weapons were stacking up to an embarrassing extent in the factory, which was under water between two islands off Chile. They had to be moved before an accident deprived Chile of a couple of windy rocks. 

* * * 

3. 

Inside Information  

I knew who was blowing up the airfields the first day. I was not informed by the Sisterhood in any way, though I had secretly been a lay Sister of the Order for more than half a year. I was able to guess it from the style of the attacks, and by the process of elimination. There wasn't anybody else that I knew of with the sheer resources to attack the whole world all at once, who had any conceivable reason to do so. But the style told me that this was an action by my Sisterhood: sneaky as a snake, swift as a spider, and no second chance. The very thoroughness of the attacks, once that had filtered through the news censorship, finally left me no room for doubt. No country in the world had any air power left, my Sisters did that. They didn't tell us about the satellite attacks for over two days, but claimed that a navigation satellite had failed, and two others were temporarily out of service while shifting orbits to take up the slack. I knew that was too much coincidence, when the weather forecasters also came up with excuses. 

I started my song about the Triumph of the Goddess fully a day before the Incarnation came on to announce it. It's a matter of public record that I was actually in the studio recording my song when she came on the air, because it's on video, and it's part of the video that goes with my song. I got an incredible amount of hassle getting the studio time to cut my song. First of all, my band just couldn't get together on that kind of notice, so it was all done with studio musicians. Then I had to bribe the band who had the time reserved. If I didn't own the studio, it would have been impossible with any amount of effort and bribes. 

After this, nobody in the world will believe that I wasn't given advance warning, but I swear it's the truth. It all made sense to me, because of the airships of the Sisterhood. 

Okay. I did have a bit of inside information about the airships that not everybody knew. I have ridden a lot of miles on Sisterhood airships, and someone who is very close to me is a pilot who must have fought in the Triumph. I happened to know that the normal Sisterhood airships had the capability to go ghostly in about ten seconds flat, so that no radar in the world could pick them up. It wasn't hard to guess that such a capability wasn't put into those monstrosities to avoid a speeding ticket. I knew the Sisterhood was very likely into smuggling (smuggling what? Skyscrapers?) and that radar invisibility was a very important part of Sisterhood planning. 

Knowing that, I deduced after airplanes started vaporizing, that piloted jet fighters must be the only things that could touch airships which were invisible to radar. So my Sisterhood was zapping airplanes, so nobody could kill airships. Therefore the Goddess was having her day. Knowing that one fact about radar was what made me so sure. 

It's sobering to realize that the same information, had it been known to the wrong person at the wrong time, could have brought the wrong person to the right conclusion, and made the Temple vanish in a puff of radioactive smoke before the Incarnation made her appearance. Well, what's past is history, and for me, things worked out very satisfactorily. I am as glad as can be that the killer jets are all pictures from history. Things are in a real mess right now, but I know which side will bubble to the top. I have no military training whatever, but it doesn't take a very deep analysis to put your money on the only power left in the world which can command the skies. That's my girls! 

I didn't know there was any such thing as a clean H-Bmb. Evidently no one else did either. But when the big ones started popping off and people started scattering, radiation readings were taken immediately. When they came up zero everywhere, that was big important news that had to be put out instantly, before the big crush of running away could kill too many people. I admit I was getting ready to run, I was scared as anybody. When the big news came about no radiation, don't run, and after I heard it repeated by people I could trust not to lie about it, I thought we were seeing something new in the world. I know who built those mother fucking Bmbs, the same person I let teach me about the whip. I think he must be dead now. This whole insane war has his mark stamped all over it, like it was his legacy or something, but it doesn't seem to have the coherence, the sense of hidden meaning behind it like it should if he were in control of it. I don't know exactly how to explain this intuition. I am getting very pregnant with his son. 

When I saw the Incarnation making her announcement, I was startled out of my skin. She looks just like him, like when he was a kid he had a movie made of himself in drag, except she was naked, and female beyond any shadow of doubt. She looks too much like him, and even in the voice there's not resemblance, but identity. She has to be his clone, except somehow the female version. This planet has gotten to be a kind of creepy place lately, with a lot of things going down that the smartest and best-informed among us can't understand. The plain ordinary folk must be spooked plenty. My sweet Sisters took the trouble to warn me that the Goddess ain't nothin' nice. That's what's really going on behind the scenes, the Goddess is moving big time, and She doesn't give a shit if people get scared or confused. Anyway, the Incarnation popped up in the middle of everything, looking exactly like somebody I care about very much that I'm afraid is dead, and she says that she's the Goddess. 

Hey, I don't know what to think. It's beyond me. The only person in the world I could ask to help me cut through problems this complicated is the one I think is dead. I seem obliged by my oath to give the Incarnation my loyalty. Fine. I am sworn to it and I will do it. I wish I didn't have this sneaky feeling, this little niggling doubt, that she might have had something to do with the death of the other. Goddess or not, I'm not real sure she will be able to find a way to make her life measure up against his. Those are some shoes that will be really hard to fill. 

It's strange watching the news these days. There are some elections coming up, but you can see in the faces of the newscasters and interviewers that nobody thinks it's completely for real any more. Obviously the government doesn't really govern any more than the Sisterhood wants it to. It is gradually becoming pretty evident to the people in the street that the Sisterhood doesn't want any more serious governing to go on. Judges are still solemnly sentencing people to decades in prison, although in a few more months there won't be any more prison buildings to put them in. 

Those states which drag their feet on tearing down the prisons are getting gratuitous help from Sisterhood airships. Oh, they just happened to be in the area, and thought they might be able to lend a hand, so if you would kindly evacuate, you've got ten minutes. The airships do a quite thorough demolition job in an amazingly short period of time. What it amounts to is a very broad hint about who is running the show. 

People are trying to get elected to office, an office that probably doesn't matter any more, by making promises about things that don't matter any more, or by pointing to blemishes on the records of their opponents, blemishes that don't matter any more. Most of the candidates are promising in roundabout ways to oppose the Sisterhood and to undo everything which has been done, but they never get around to saying exactly how they intend to do all this. The same people were promising a short while ago that this country would never give in to the outrageous demands of the Sisterhood, but they failed to mention that the only option was to keep getting Bmbed. The politicians are pretty confused, but they sure pretend not to be. 

The Sisterhood meanwhile is setting up solar energy plants and hydrogen-conversion plants in old factory buildings which are not in use. Many gas stations are already offering hydrogen as an option, for the petroleum giants are seeing the writing on the wall. Rumors are flying around on the airwaves, with guesses running between two and five years before you won't be able to buy gas or diesel. It is a fact that some refineries have already been forced to close, by having an airship park over them and tell people to shut down and go home. 

The Sisterhood has been really careless about compensating people for lost property and lost jobs. For example, the rain forest has received its initial protection by the crude means of blowing up bridges. Tanker trucks hauling fuel into the rain forest have been picked up, and the drivers sweetly informed in Portugese or whatever their language, that they can get out or they don't have to. After the drivers are lowered down to stop oncoming traffic, their rigs are then dropped back on the highways from altitudes of a hundred feet or more. The resulting explosions are memorable reminders that the Sisterhood doesn't want any more gasoline coming through on that road. With bridges out and fuel interdicted, logging in the Amazon has nearly stopped. 

So the Sisterhood doesn't give a shit about property rights; I can live with that, but when you mess with people's livelihood it's considered proper to provide them with options. Hey, well I'm just a fucking whore, I don't rule the fucking world. Maybe those lines of refugees (refugees from a gas shortage!) walking out of the rain forest was what needed to happen there, I don't know. Like I say, I've been watching the news a lot. My Triumph song is on top of the charts, but I haven't felt much like making music, so I don't have much to do. I want to get busy having a baby, but it's not time yet. I haven't been able to log on any of the System forums, nor download anything. I can upload, so I'll stick this note in my file. The Temple has been oddly quiet as far as news goes. All we hear from the Sisterhood are the situational ultimatums from the airships. Wish I knew what, if anything, is going on. 

* * * 

4. 

Actualization  

The evacuation of the Temple never really did come off. Predictably, the Incarnation refused to leave. With the living Goddess staying in the Temple, it was hard to get anybody to budge. I was able to get the airship crews rotated around, so by the day of the Triumph most of the Priestesses had served as airship crew. Merribelle won her bet, and I put off a Bmbing run long enough to give her a tongue job I hope she found memorable. The original crews were staggering around the Temple Bwlegged, from getting all that good dick. On the day of the Triumph, I rounded them up and stuck them on all our new ships, with whatever other whores I could catch by the snatch. Still, the Temple was about half full of sluts when I flew, most of them flunkies. I never knew we had so many administrative personnel. 

I was mad, really. A few howitzer rounds in the courtyards of the Temple would leave those flunky sluts with a lot less to administer. Yet I knew not to argue with divine prerogative. Quite naturally, her Holiness turned out to be right, and not a hostile soul tiptoed up to the Temple gates to do mischief all the while we were blowing the shit out of every military airfield on the planet. Okay, so a deity is entitled to a little run of luck, but you're just not supposed to run a war that way. The Incarnation didn't have to hear any loud noises, and she didn't have to watch those awful angry men running around. It was my job to make loud noises and kill a lot of people. I took care of that part. 

I was mad at the Incarnation, and scared for her. She cured my anger in a minute flat, and felt the other, that I have deep personal feelings for her, and now she plays on my heart-strings any time she feels like it. It feels like she has one of those little gold chains hooked to my heart. Oh, come here, Jennifer. Oh, didn't you feel it? I flexed my finger ever so slightly, and to you that means come here. No doubt you shall learn, Jennifer. 

Yes, I have a crush on Cynthia, an infatuation, I love her, I'm in trouble. It's a very large world, but nowhere on it could I find such a casually cruel mistress. She makes me take top, but we Bth know who's the Bss when her wrists are free. Incidentally, she's good. I'm good, and I've been with the best, but this kid is catching up quick. 

There is so much to say about my Mistress, but I choose to be discreet. I am sure any file on the System, however processed, is an open Bok to her, or she's not her father's daughter. I should just write as if it were to her directly. Hello, my love. Did you know how badly hooked I am on you? Now that I've mentioned it to you, I know you wouldn't play my little chain, to give my heart pain, my darling. I am just a fucking whore. I don't rule the fucking world. 

We do have a great deal of say these days about how things will go in the world, though. So far, all we have asked the nations for is only what was proper in Sumer and Babylon, when a new emperor acceded to the throne, which is that all prisoners be freed and all debts forgiven. The modern credit structure was not designed to be interrupted even once. Half of financing consists of lending out Brrowed money. While this action did not deal the death blow to usury capitalism in those countries which came to terms with us early, it sure put a real big crimp in it. The citizens would learn the important lesson that the State was not the perfect prophet, not perfectly able to predict the future, for there were prisoners walking free, whom the State had said would remain prisoners for several more years to come. We put a large kink in their calendar. 

While we had our hands around their throats, we made a few more strong suggestions and helpful hints, and they seemed to be listening. We didn't mind if these suggestions seemed to come from inside the host country, we encouraged that. We advised a constitutional amendment providing no bill become law without its expiration date on its face, and we didn't like more than seventeen, nineteen years max lifetime for any law, so its proponents might live to see how it came out. We suggested a gigantic reform, such that the central bank, or agency which issued the currency, provide interest-free loans on demand to the poor. 

We knew that this would break the economy, which was our goal. We showed the public how usury was a diabolic institution, and proved it out of their own scriptures, pretty much burning the bankers out of their own countries, in a social sense at least, within weeks. We created the demand for interest-free credit from the grass roots, and agitated strongly, until the pressure was so great the central banks caved in, dooming the rest of the financial institutions in the nation. We broke them. 

The other nominal choice of the national leaders, not to give up, would have given us the implied obligation to keep blowing things up. We were about as horrified by this possibility as were the beleaguered national commands. But we, living in the clouds, could set our own schedules, while on the ground public opinion counts for a lot, especially when the public thinks it's important to hurry. The public thought we were hanging around inside every cloud with unlimited thermonuclear devices, which must have been worrisome. Our thermonuclear devices, the big ones, were gone within an hour, except for the four for Colorado Springs. We kept some reserve on the lower-yield devices in case some fool found ICBM's, and we needed to lose them and the fool. But practically all of our fusion Bmbs were expended the first day, making lakes out of military airfields. 

The neutral-beam cannon, a shorthand name for an actually more complex set of equipments for projecting energy, found its main use in clipping the tops off symbolic government buildings and other structures. That was a persuasive argument. It let the rain in. People could see it. It made an ideal backdrop for newscasts. 

We won, so far. A lot of people died that first day. I do not enjoy the responsibility for that. Detonating a nuclear device on the fringes of a city is not good. All my estimates for civilian casualties were too low by an order of magnitude. The X-ray flux killed them, and people will keep on getting cancers from that too, because I didn't understand the data the System tried to give me. I completely underestimated the X-rays. Induced radioactivity at least was negligible, one calculation I got right. 

But we were successful in that we thoroughly discouraged military air traffic from the first hour. We picked off a lot of jets coming in to land at airfields that weren't there any more, and many more trying to land at civil airports. I knocked out two stranded on highways. We also zapped a couple heads of state who happened to be on those airfields we hit. Sorry 'But that. Wrong place, wrong time, you know? 

We gave no warning, just started blowing up airfields around the world. Lots of military people went crazy in that first hour trying to figure out who we were. The news services got on our trails nearly a day into the battle. By that time we had pretty much won, because the jets that were left that could touch us didn't seem too eager to roar up into the sky to try to scout us out by eye. We were in hunting mode by then, finding jets by twos and sixes, popping helicopters for practice. We flew a lot more chill rockets than we needed, and nothing makes a pilot edgy as much as a weapons bay stuffed with chill Bmbs. 

One of those weapons was very much overkill for a ship our size, and our ship was very big. The Consort claimed gleefully that he had developed the first explosive weapon with exactly one hundred percent probably of detonation. The pilots who flew the damned things would have been happier if he weren't quite so sure. For the record, every one we fired went off as advertised, in a most spectacular explosion. Also for the record, every one we loaded, we fired. I didn't want my girls to carry anything like that home. 

My HQ was aboard the Dorienne, a supersonic armored battle cruiser. The armor is all inside the main envelope, so the part you can see is not armored. In the daytime, we burn bright lights on the parts facing the ground, trying to match the sky background illumination, so it's not easy to see the part you can see. If you do see the part you can see, it's designed to be blown off and immediately replaced, at speeds supposedly of three hundred miles an hour. The envelope, which contains a cellular structure, is supposed to help cushion a blast. Afterward, its remains will blow themselves off the armored core of the airship, making it easier to replace in flight. 

So the Dorienne was armored against high-velocity penetrating rounds, essentially shellfire. The armor naturally contained no metal. Small arms fire did not concern us. A rifle round would penetrate deeper than the conductivity screen which marked the inner Bundary of the radar absorption structure, so we would not have to worry about accumulating pellets of metal where radar could see them. The outer envelope was not of such nature to leak out gas when penetrated by a bullet, so everyone's favorite fantasy that we would pop or explode if pierced was several orders of magnitude divorced from reality. It just didn't matter to us if you fired your rifle into our ship until your barrel melted down. 

What did matter is that we had this war going, and it was a really bad idea to shoot a rifle at us at the time. We were itching for targets. No doubt we knocked out a lot of civilian riflemen, and a good chunk of the landscape around them. The Consort made up a vast excess of explosive things, and we carried most of those things with us, and we didn't want to bring them home. The chill Bmb was magnetometer guided, and it liked aircraft carriers best of all, but if none was handy it would go for another steamship, or lacking steamships a locomotive, if no locomotive at least a tank, et cetera, in order of decreasing content of ferrous metal. Lacking any signal, it would go straight and blow up. 

I ordered firing on military targets only. The national commands complied with a gigantic flurry of troop movements, and we dusted lots of convoys and trains. Due to the nature of our weaponry, the heaviest armor was most likely to be blasted. In terms of casualties, we didn't scratch the strength of the biggest armies, though we neutralized everybody's air force. We showed the navies we could make a one-puff steam engine out of any of their capital ships, by sinking some carriers right at first, so we kept them thinking submarines until the political situation was inappropriate for submarine use. The missile commands were likewise paralyzed for want of a target. 

We gave them quite a dilemma. The only thing most of the national intelligence services knew about the Sisterhood was where the Temple was. They could see the Temple on the news, enough to know it wasn't a military compound nor an airship base. Our civil airship works nearby was obviously empty, closed, evacuated, most of the buildings torn down. They knew by the end of the first day that whoever was attacking them was doing so from airships they couldn't see on radar. That's also when they learned they were losing their spy birds, and the comms, weather, and navigation birds that flew polar orbits. They didn't know where our airships launched from, and they didn't know where we would go when we went home, and they didn't know how long it would take us to go away and stop blowing things up. They could not establish a target zone. Amazingly, nobody ever targeted the Temple with an ICBM. 

The principle, I suppose, of the Triumph was to stay hidden. Once we had lifted off, they couldn't see us and couldn't touch us, didn't even know who we were until we told them. I declared a complete interdict on all air traffic everywhere in the world on the second day, largely a matter of form because nobody was taking off. We had the skies to ourselves for a few days, and the world noticed we were serious. We let humanitarian flights start again the third day of the war, and commercial air traffic resumed three days later. Some of those flights went to countries with governments we wanted to crunch, but whether we could crunch the government would not depend on whether a few tourists flew in or out. 

The Incarnation was brilliant in her speech on the fourth day, though few of the news nets dared put out her image in full figure, because of course she was naked. She explained who she was, and that the people should not be alarmed, she had merely asked the Sisterhood to reinstate the courtesies of a few millennia ago in honor of her accession as Incarnation, namely freeing all prisoners and forgiving all debts, so please be gracious enough to forgive her if the steps her Sisterhood had taken were too drastic, the Sisters were taking her instructions too literally, but Cynthia would personally see that everything was put right back the way it was, the egg unscrambled, and things would be fine, just fine. Meanwhile we went on blowing things up. We blew up every combat jet we could see, and big places where combat jets might hide, and big flat places they might could land if they were hiding in the big buildings next to the flat places. Eventually we were hitting some pretty unlikely targets, so I ordered the girls in, and naturally they used up their ordnance loads on even more unlikely targets. C'est la guerre. 

The government would ask for a parlay, and we would say we were busy blowing things up right now, but we could parlay tomorrow maybe. We would parlay, and they would balk at letting go their prisoners, and we would chop off the peak of their tallest government building, and they would parlay again. They would balk at forgiving all debts, and we would cut their defense administration building in two as if we used a giant saw blade, and they would parlay again. The delay made us itchy and short-tempered, and they were naturally nervous. 

We found ways to reach agreement. We could call down judgment from the clouds any time, while they suddenly were unable to call on any air power at all. We blew things up until they came to understand our terms. Some of them may have been able to blow up the Temple and the Incarnation, but they did not choose to do so. We won. 

The business about the X-ray flux from our supposedly clean Bmbs will continue to haunt me until I die. After I learned what a massacre we were making around the target airfields, there was a time I could have called the rest of the shots off with the job half done. That might have saved a hundred thousand lives. Not ours, though. We would have lost our war, and killer jets would be screaming through the skies right now over the corpses of the Sisterhood. 

* * * 

5. 

Sleek Predator  

Hey, the girl looks good. Your Sister Melodia has got her tight belly back again, and her trim thighs, and she's ready to show the men what her leather pussy can do! Problem is, the men aren't available right now. Last few hundred men I saw, I killed. Also a few hundred before that, and a few hundred before that. Little Tish is flying a gun ship, not carrying rock stars around any more. I'm all alone in this mean bastard of a brand new ship, not even a robot or a friendly barnyard animal around to seduce, and I'm looking better than I have in a year or more. Feeling fit and looking fine, swooping down out of the clouds to interdict troop movements. That means I bash convoys, armored columns and troop trains in six European countries. 

I sleep in the clouds. So far I have been lucky enough to find handy cloud banks to sleep in all five nights, but tonight I don't think there will be any clouds in my zone. That means I will have to climb to a ridiculous altitude so I can't be spotted from the ground. The winds up there are so fast I will be blown out of my zone in less than four hours, so I will have to sleep in two separate naps. Such is the life of a troop killer. 

You would think the armies down there would wise up and quit trying to shift troops and tanks around. Well, no, it's political. There's really nowhere for any soldiers to go any better than right where they are, and that has the advantage that it doesn't get them killed. But the generals don't have any more airplanes to move around now. They have to do something, to look busy, and make the politicians believe they are taking every possible action to preserve the realm. So they shuffle the troops around every day, and I come down and zap them. Those men are dying for no reason. I know that men have always died in war for no reason, but this seems particularly senseless. We don't have a policy of targeting army bases arbitrarily, and the commanders must know that by now. I have eye-drones in quasi-random circuits, doing drunkard's walks in the sky that always end up over the same big army bases. I don't spot everything that comes out those gates, but enough to keep me busy. Stupid officers. 

Once I potted jets getting hauled around on trucks. Those were targets I considered worth my while. My eye was hanging about a mile from the target, so absolute location was already programmed into my weapons systems. I swooped in from ten miles up, a hundred twenty miles off. This Bat is swift. I set fire control for standard umbrella coverage with a volumetric center right behind the cockpit of each jet, five times. When I got a couple of miles from the truck column, five streaks of mist pointed from the nose of my ship, and my part was done. When I got back to a more comfortable altitude, I reviewed a slowed-down version of what I had wrought, from the perspective of the blimp eye. Each of my five weapons had cracked apart in the air, into dozens of small smart charges, which had flown precise slowdown paths to their preset vertex of the dynamic shaped charge. At the scheduled millisecond, each wingless jet on its trailer, covered with its tarp, became the focus of a hemisphere of detonations, and became a scatter of shredded metal. Had I chosen to use my chill Bmbs, they would have become nothing more than huge gaps in the asphalt. 

Most of our pilots hate the chill Bmbs. They're scared of them. Me, I have no problem with them. None of them have ever malfunctioned. I think they're well-behaved weapons. They have an entirely predictable failure mode, and they only fail once. If one of them goes bad, I will never even know it. They are effective weaponry. They make a column of tanks go away in a hurry, and the road they were riding on, and the ground the road was laid on. In the mountains, you don't have to worry about that road being rebuilt any time soon. Landslides aren't easy to repair. 

I expended three chill Bmbs yesterday, after I picked up another flight of SAM's. I had just crunched a troop train, and had not had time to get up to the speed and altitude I liked. The alarm hooted, and the ship's brain put the running Bots on, by automatically shifting to full throttle and cutting in rocket assist engines. I scanned the hostiles, four trails rising, and they sure meant to trespass on my part of the sky. Higher up I could have just watched them swish by, because all high altitude SAM's are radar guided, and none of them could pick me out from any other patch of air. But down here there might be trouble, because somebody could be painting me with a laser to drive those Bgeys right down my throat. 

I shot quick, before the automatics could open up with the standard missile defense system. This little girl wants to save her ass for better things. I Bxed the heads of the missile trails with my expanded cursor and pushed the targeting button for a chill Bmb. The targeting button lit, so I hoped the stupid machinery had understood what I meant, and pushed the bye-bye button. I felt the jolt as the weapon launched. All our rocket ordnance is launched from staged guns, the basic idea for which was supposedly the brainchild of a crazed cat named Adolph Hitler. We want our rounds away fast, so they are fired by not one but four charges spaced down the length of the launch tube, gun barrel to you. Hitler didn't have the advantage of ceramic guns with diamond linings, though. 

Speed is the reason I wanted to use the chill Bmb rather than the anti-missile system, because that weapon burns an electric arcjet rather than a rocket engine. It is swift. It made the rising missiles look like they were standing still as it leaped down on them, then it did its one and only job and there was nothing there any more except a solid chunk of really bright light. Meanwhile, I had traced the missile trajectories back to where they must have come from, and found a slot in the hillside that had to be a hardened missile emplacement. There was another slot not far off which was its double. I targeted Bth launch sites, fired off two more chill Bmbs, and headed back toward my sweet home in the stratosphere. I forgot to review the tapes on those last two weapons, but I have a hunch they hit something. Magnetometer guidance systems don't tend to miss. so if there was any metal in those slots in the hill, it's not there now. 

During my whole patrol, there has not been an airplane in the sky. Anything that flew, I would blow up. We are supposed to allow medical evacuations by helicopter and other humanitarian flights, but either none have been requested or we haven't cleared any. My methods don't tend to leave any wounded lying around, apparently. I attack to rip up machinery, and people are a lot more fragile than the machines they ride around in. Until I am informed otherwise, nobody flies, period. 

I don't have a single radio on my ship. No transmitter, not even a receiver. The idea behind that is that radio always needs some kind of an antenna exposed to the outside world in order to work, and any radio antenna will be potentially visible to radar. All my communications are optical, using lasers. Usually I get my images from the eye blimps by cloud Bunce, but I can get a higher data rate from snowfields, especially the surface of a glacier. One at a time of the eye blimps always does have a radio aerial unrolled. They are considered expendable, and in fact I have lost two of them, each time the one then assigned to radio communications. While they have the aerial out, they do show up on ground radar, and they can be hit by missiles if they don't roll it in quickly enough. If I lost them all, headquarters would have no way to get in touch with me, and really no way even to find me. Our ships are that sneaky. Of course, if I lost all my eye blimps, I would head in to a base to get some more. 

Probably tomorrow night, I will need either relief or resupply. I hope I will get to come in, because this is getting to be Bring. If I am resupplied in the air, I hope at least some clouds roll in to cover the operation. That is a very vulnerable time. There is no way to avoid some bright radar flashes, and also some heat leakage which can be seen on infra-red scans. The best way to do it is over the top of a thunderstorm, believe it or not. Thunderstorms are tall. They are about the scariest places I can imagine for an airship, because of the electrical weather around them. They have nice vertical breezes full of powdered ice, which can turn your airship into an anvil in about a minute. If you fall through a thundercloud, you don't have to worry about what will happen when you hit the ground. The lightning will blast you to ribbons miles above the ground. Still, thunderstorms do have tops, they're just tall. They say lightning doesn't usually like to go straight up, but then they say they're not really too sure of that. I've been there a few times, and haven't been hit yet. I'd rather take my chances with forces of nature which could be hostile, than with guided missiles which are absolutely hostile. Nobody can see through a thunderstorm with anything. 

* * * 

6. 

Reassurances  

Good evening. My name is Cynthia 717. I am afraid I have been responsible for the recent series of disasters at the airbases around the world in recent days, and I would like to assure you that the situation is now under control, and any further damage will be stopped. 

I am the Incarnation of Inanna. Religions which include the belief in human manifestation of their deity name certain human beings at the appropriate time to be their Incarnation, as is the case with me. You may consider this status to be a religious office within the Order of Inanna, though believers consider it in terms of an existential status rather than an office. I am the human manifestation of the Goddess Inanna. 

I had recently asked my Sisterhood to prepare a fitting accession ceremony for me, to celebrate my appearance on Earth in human form. I told them that it was customary in my background, on occasion of a new important accession, to release all prisoners and forgive all debts. I was not totally aware of the complex political situation is now current on the Earth, and I was not familiar with the concept of the national State. I kept pressing my Sisters for what I considered merely a matter of decorum, get the prisoners freed and debts forgiven. 

But this world is now a very complex place, and my Sisterhood is subtle and resourceful. They knew that such a request would violate the national sovereignty of nearly two hundred countries, but they were eager to fulfill my bidding. They took it to mean that I wanted to force nations to comply with these courtesies against the will of those in government of those nations. I had presumed it was just a matter of information, that any governors who heard I was again reborn on Earth would be glad to set prisoners free and forget previous debts. 

Undoubtedly we were all to blame: myself, for not learning more before I made my imperious demands, and the members of my Sisterhood, for stretching the issue to such an extreme. We apologize for the suffering, the injury, and most sincerely for the loss of life. I will accept the formal courtesies due me should any government now wish to do me that respect. If not, you may continue along the course of your daily lives, for you are by no means compelled to recognize my existence. The fact is, I don't recognize governments myself, so the whole formal affair means little to me. If you have people locked up, by all means release them; that is only elementary sensibility. If you have money owed you, forget it. If you can't get by without it, you did wrong to lend it. If you can, do so. These are a couple of things designed to make people happy, most of all the least fortunate people, who have little enough reason to be happy from day to day. Well their day has come around. The Goddess is not incarnated every day. 

This is the time to give the poor people and the captives a reason to celebrate. Celebrate with us. Let them go. Release them. You say these prisoners did something evil in the past, but you see that was before my time. You didn't prove it to me. Let them go now. Start again with a clean slate. Don't punish anybody for anything they did before this instant, and don't ask them for money they may have owed you before right now. It's very simple. Just start all over. 

Things were a mess the last few days, but that's all over now. Everything has returned right back to its normal sate again. Nothing more is going to happen to disturb you. We let our celebration get out of hand, but if you just join us in our celebration we can all be happy together. We are fully aware of the repairs that need to be made, and are already meeting in cooperation with the host governments to consider the damages. Certainly no malice was intended to any government involved. We are dealing with them, and I assure you the results of our meetings will be satisfactory to all involved. 

I grant you my benediction. 

* * * 

7.

Letter to Dad  

Dear Daddy, 

Yeah, I tricked you, or rather took advantage of your helpless condition and had you killed so I could live. Anyway I surprised you. The Sisters on Moon, you see, already worshiped me as the Incarnation. I worked them so they would freeze your brain, spinal cord and eyes, optic nerves and a couple of other little vital things that might be essential to your reincarnation, and just freeze them instead of putting them over into my meat right away. They didn't want me to die, you see, because they thought I was actually the Goddess. They would rather see me live, and you just wait a while. 

So the bets went on a pubescent living Goddess in her own native Bdy instead of a deballed ex-Consort in a fake female Bdy which frankly was starting to get pretty shabby. Living with Queen B as odalisque and whipping-girl really took a lot out of you. She must have been a really tough woman there toward the end. Spiritually, I mean. Her flesh had a certain density to its texture, but its flavor was light without perceptible bitter tinge. I got a piece of her meat you didn't know about, brought to me on the ship bringing your dying Bdy. 

I also managed a trick that would seem unlawful. I ate your own unsacrificed ham all by myself. Not a bad taste, considering all the miles you had on you, ha-ha. When the Sisters agreed to let me keep my brain and other goodies, I asked them if you could be sacrificed, and still freeze the essential parts of you. After the sacrifice, you see. That way, we could eat your meat. You were pretty important to these Sisters, and I suppose to all of them. We all loved you a lot, and wanted to eat your flesh. I figured you would want to go out in the bellies of your Sisters, so you would volunteer for the sacrifice if I suggested it the right way. 

But, the Sisterhood couldn't go along. You had received your death wound more than three days before, and all that time you knew you were dying, so your meat was tainted with sourness, so they said. For that reason you were not fit for sacrifice. So you were simply put to sleep and dissected. While the team was busy with the important parts I got to the meat alone, and carved off half your skinny ass and some thigh meat. Nobody ever asked me about it. Not a soul came near the kitchen for the next ten or twelve hours. 

That ass had propelled you through a lot of walking, a few fights, and some amazing sex. I honored you in its preparation, then sat down and ate practically the whole thing. It didn't taste tainted to me. Oh, a hint of flavor said you were not at your best, but then your best at anything was always so incredibly better than other people's best. I considered it excellent and gorged myself. 

Assuming I am the Incarnation (and you'd better assume that, by the way, as you will learn) then all sacrifices are just being made to me anyway, right? Surely if the Goddess (me) wants a Sister's meat (you), she can just take it, right? I figured if you had thought of it, that you would want me to eat your meat, so in virtual terms you had made me a personal sacrifice of yourself. Well, however complex the moral question, that is one of the things you should know about: the Bdy you will inherit has eaten unsacrificed human meat. The meat was you. 

Since you are reading this, I have given you our Bdy. I am dead now forever, but I blazed uniquely across the human species. People won't forget me. I'm happy. Sorry I made you wait, but it was less than a year. A year is nothing to a person at nearly no Kelvins, and nearly no Bdy anyway. Forgive. If not, well you're just a fucking whore, you don't rule the fucking world. I love you, Daddy. 

Except that you do. Rule the world, that is. I've been a busy little girl while you were dead. I made us Queen of the whole world. That's not official nor legal, that title is not used in public. That's a political fact, we (me and you, first just me and now just you, in my Bdy) reign and rule. Thanks for leaving such detailed plans for the Triumph. Worked like a charm. Of course it couldn't have happened without years of careful and totally secret spadework. The efforts of Sisters Sandra, Merribelle, and Elanor are particularly to be appreciated in this regard. You shouldn't be surprised to learn I left its execution in the hands of young Sister Jennifer. I simply figured that no one deserved the chance to lead our Triumph more than the woman who cut off your balls and ate them, then lived to tell about it. 

Also, of course, we are the Incarnation. For much of the world, we are the living Goddess. Thou art just going to have to learn to get used to using the plural first person. It's now a fact of thy life. Do me the favor to think of me every time thou sayest "we". Yeah, you are Queen and Goddess on this planet now. Did your mamma ever think you would grow up to be Goddess Queen of Earth, back when you were a little By? That's my present for you, like it? 

Please be really careful. It would be easy to fuck everything up now. You can't change waves any more. You have to ride this one all the way in, to the crashing, unknown end. Speaking of the end, if you get the choice when that time comes, would you please get us sacrificed? Something makes me want to go out in the bellies of my Sisters, and I can't this time, because I have to save the Bdy for you. I'm lucky, because not many people are able to get two deaths. Well, you for one, and me for another, we will each get two deaths apiece. What's that add up to, four between us? We're rich in deaths! 

The Goddess thing is kind of complicated, a metaphysical balancing act. Don't make any drastic changes in the way I have it running until you can feel your way into the job. ABve all, don't make any pronouncements about how you want to make people believe or not believe something. You can't control what they believe, and the slightest bit of trying could bring the whole place down around your ears like a castle of cards. Not that the Sisterhood is unstable, but the world is. 

In sex, you can get away with pretty much anything you want, you make the rules. Lately I have tended to be the traditional passive female to some of the more aggressive senior Sisters, because I like the sting of the lash. I have refrained from getting any significant markings, because you might not like it. You also notice I didn't get us pregnant. I was tempted. I know you want to have a baby, but rather than a natural child you might choose to have another clone, like me. Or you might not. After all, I had you killed and chilled, and ate your skinny old ham. Wouldn't it be a bitch if all your clones turned out to be smarter than you? 

Well, I'm not really. In fact, that is why I choose to lay it down, and let you have life again now. You know the technical shit that's needed now. There's no way I can duplicate your work. Even if I had the mind for it, and that's not a sure thing, there just is not time for me to learn all the data you already know. It's true, think about it. I don't know how to get the carbon out of the air, and probably nobody else does, but you do. I don't know how to make Moon a living place, but you do. ABve all, I can't build your bloody starship, and it's a damn sure thing nobody else on this world can get it done, but you can. Sitting in your icy brain as I write this are detailed plans for all these things, and who knows what else. Leaving you dead now wouldn't be fair to the world, it would be stupid and selfish, and ultimately suicidal. 

Suicide. Daddy, I'm scared. I don't want to die. I wish I could scream it. That's why I wish for Sacrifice, for the sake of my death song, so I could scream out to the world my rejection and fear of death. But I must die so you can live. When they come to take out our heart, in the end, let them hear it. Make my death song part of yours. Besides the Sacrifice, the only other thing I want out of life is you. That's impossible too. So I'm finished, lover. That's all. 

The Bdy's in pretty good shape. The breasts are a lot bigger than you saw them, but I still don't think they are completely filled out. There's more pubic hair. Right now I have it in a gold tone, but do what you want. The genitals are of course more developed, stronger and juicier. I have kept my pussy delightfully tight. I love the sensation when my active partner has to stretch my flesh out almost painfully just to get it in. Outrageous, right? What more could a goddess ask for, than to have a small pussy? 

There are a couple questions I'm leaving with. Obviously, it's futile to mention them. Everybody dies with unanswered questions. I found my birth mother, but who was my mitochondrial mother? Whose egg did you use? My bets are on Merribelle, because you showed a lot of sentimentality toward her sometimes. I haven't had time to develop much sentiment. I've been careful not to. I have to go out alone. Death is going to hurt a lot. Never do this again, what you did to me. There has to be a better way. I would like to scream at you. 

Right. Look, I know you have had to work with some very unique constraints in your life. I am awed by your accomplishments. There were some things I might have done differently, but you were the one on the spot at the time to make those choices. If nobody else has got around to it, let me tell you what a fine job you did in your life so far. It seems to me that your work will save us all, so I would like to thank you on behalf of the life of this planet. 

Just do me a favor. Don't raise another clone to kill, if you must prolong your life like that. Make one of those brainless babies, anencephalic, for your spare parts. Wire instruments into its nerve trunks to keep it alive and developing, until its tissues and organs are useable. See, my consciousness rebels at the thought of termination. It's getting worse, it's not getting better. I have to do the deed now before it becomes impossible. 

I have had all my nerves mapped and tagged with tracers. I will use a neurotoxin which is highly specific to the central nervous system. It should only kill my brain and spinal cord, and leave the lower ganglia undamaged. It will take ten or twelve minutes, but I think consciousness will be gone in about three minutes. Medical will get my message packet the instant I inject it, but of course they won't be able to reverse it. I'm going to try to spend the whole time screaming, so I won't have time for unhappy thoughts. 

Good-bye, my father, my self. I love you. 

Cynthia 

* * * 

9. 

Corpse Inheritance  

My daughter had outsmarted me and killed me, or rather chilled me. Then less than a year later she committed suicide and gave me her Bdy. Oh and by the way, she had conquered the world and I was now theocrat of the planet and a living divinity. Well, shucks. 

I had quite a bit of adjusting to do, and I wanted to take it slowly. First the Bdy. It was quite a bit smaller than I was used to. Luckily, in the Jezebel Bdy I had a little practice in trimming down my somatic self-image, when I had an inch or so taken off my height and lost fifteen pounds. Now I had to adjust to losses in size and mass of perhaps twice again those figures. With intensity I set about the task of teaching my tired old brain the new trick of co-ordinating the Bdy of an adolescent female. 

Much of the problem was physiological in nature. Severed nerves do not knit immediately. In nature, they would not grow back together at all, but we had found a lot of ways to trick this natural reluctance to heal nerves. Interestingly, each time a neural pathway established itself it would always announce its success in the same way: pain. I rapidly became something of a connoisseur of the various flavors of pain. There was not a one of them I enjoyed. I was able to tolerate the process only because I was aware of what was going on. My central nervous system and my Bdy, which had not been Brn to each other, were establishing channels of communication and control. It hurt unpredictably and frequently, but there was no lingering chronic pain in any particular location. 

I was not fit to go out in public in this condition, so I confined my contacts to my closest confidants. I didn't have sex during this phase. I did get a lot of comfort nestled against the warm naked Bdies of my dearest slaves, when I was assaulted by random pangs of my healing nerves. Unable to concentrate, I was sorely annoyed about losing this precious time I needed for learning. Whenever I would get a little grouchy, I was overwhelmed with massages and caresses, drowned in loyalty and love. Patience paid: I lived and gradually healed. 

There were some dozen or so invasive operations to correct recalcitrant neural pathways. However, our operations were not the traditional major surgery, with the patient cold as a kipper under general anesthesia and sliced open from keel to jib. In none of these operations was an incision made in the skin big enough to stick a thumb in. These were corrections on nerves, not swapping out livers or something. The anesthesia was electrically induced. I got to watch on my own small screens. I got to make comments, suggestions, and criticisms, all of which were completely ignored by the microsurgery teams. I didn't get to wiggle nor scratch my ass. I was about as thoroughly restrained as I could be without using nails. 

Well, my daughter. As I feared, she turned out smarter than me and defeated me before I knew there was a fight. That's how I like to play the game, for my opponent to flop down dead before he knows there is a threat. My cross-sex clone played it quicker and better than I. With me out of the way, she had pulled the same game on the whole world. Quicker and better than I could have done. In fact, I would still be dithering with the decision to go, and might have dithered with that decision for the rest of my life. For a human being to have her kind of potential was a scary thing. 

Now being dead, she was one with the rest of history. How to live with her legacy was the question currently on the table. Essentially, she had claimed that she was the Goddess, that's what Incarnation means. So in essence, I was stuck with acting the part of the Goddess, or... Or else nothing. There just was no decent alternative. Suicide or any other type of escape into oblivion for me right now is unthinkable. For all I knew the whole fucking planet would fall apart into recrimination, madness, ultimate obliteration. Also all my friends would be disappointed. No way to get away. But my mamma didn't raise me to be a Goddess. She said, "Be a good By" and there was no way Goddessing was any part of that. 

A lot of water had gone under the bridge since Mamma's day. A lot of water, and some blood. Her kind of good By was no longer part of the possible universe, and had vanished from the universe of the desirable some decades before that. The real now included a Goddess, and that reality was identified, and that identity was me. It wasn't my fault (or was it?), it wasn't my doing (or was it?), it wasn't my plan (or was it?). 

What had been my plan, what had been my doing, what had been my fault? I had firstly wanted to stop the greenhouse catastrophe. Now I had the power to reverse that, if anyone could. Objectively, no person in the world was more qualified for the task. Therefore, you stupid shit, you are exactly where you needed to be, and furthermore, you stupid shit, you are exactly where you wanted to be. Uh, right. 

Keep on, don't stop there. I didn't care to do the killing, I wanted the fascist pigs to die but I didn't care to get all messy with their blood. Little daughter took that all out of my hands, then gave her life to me. Say it wasn't convenient. Say it wasn't how you planned it. I didn't plan that. No, not you, dolt, the Goddess. Oops. Oh, shit. Wait just a fucking minute. 

Let us venture, just momentarily, beyond the personal maunderings of a self-pitying ingrate in search of an aspect a trifle less subjective. Take as the hypothetical the consciousness of a time-displaced sex goddess who might just conceivably be interested in a little more direct contact with the physical contemporary world. Do you think she might perhaps from time to time lift her ring-laden finger to sort of stir the pot a bit? I am toying with the edges of a really chilling concept. I ain't too easy to scare, but right now I ain't too comfortable. Do not dip your toe in this chilly water, honey. If you see it you better jump in. 

I see a clay tablet pressed under tons of dust and rubble in the ruins of Ur. I see, oh, some millennia flash by overhead like lightning flashes. I see a finger nudge the tablet, a hand disturb it. I see a photo of the face of the tablet in a Bok, and also in the Bok the phonetic transcription interlinear with the cuneiform, and the translation. The most ancient literary work, it says. The most ancient religious writing, it says. Inanna and the Gardener. Inanna's Descent into the Nether World. Don't look now, but girlfriend just found her way back out of that cave. 

Suppose there were such a thing as a spell. Hey, some fairly knowledgeable people have considered such things. Lay some information theory on it. Resolved, that there is a property of a particular clay tablet written with cuneiform characters, that the shape of the entirety transmits more information to the brain than is communicated by the Sumerian text inscribed thereon. Say an impressionable young By gets this Bok, a good By but horny, and the image of that Goddess striding into that dark cave performing her seven-part strip tease sets up an understanding in more than just his brain, say some gonad chemistry gets involved as well. The unfamiliar look of the cuneiform inscription draws his gaze, and the eidetic image of that clay tablet is holographically branded into his visual memory. The Goddess says gotcha. Were there such thing as a spell, few antiquities are more likely to be ensorcerelled than that piece of dried mud. Power, don't talk about power, you aren't fooling with penny-ante necromancers, this is the big leagues. Some old secrets out of some old Boks, get back, go eat your ice cream. Not secret, chick, the most secret. Not old, chick, the oldest Bok there is on this planet. 

In this wise did I open myself to the possibility that a short fat temple scribe, whose dust has blown over the barley fields of three hundred generations of Iraqi farmers, might possibly have influenced me more than I knew. Perforce I must consider my situation more objectively. From the viewpoint of, to pull an example out of the air, the Goddess. Could it be that the plans I had considered mine alone, were influenced to some slight extent by the expression of Her will? 

Reluctant as I may be to admit it, it clicks, it fucking clicks. The facts of my recent life come pounding on my head like padded brickbats. I am in my third Bdy. That wasn't the way I intended it to be. However, every little change in my physical being has made it just a little more comfy for Her to live in, dig? 

It wasn't my idea to be made a eunuch. But She wasn't happy hanging testicles. I liked being male, but She wanted me female. The sex-changed Bdy was, shall we say, middle-aged. Now I have become a pubescent girl, that just tickles Her twat. Could be She's getting ready to settle in. Objectivity. OK, the most likely explanation is that She settled in already, some years back, and has been more or less driving from the back seat. Many of my actions have been pretty hard to explain to myself. My sexual abilities as a man were kind of difficult to attribute to natural causes. My mental achievements, well look, I'm good, but maybe nobody should be quite that good. It makes more sense to say I've been getting some sort of a Bost in that department too. 

Perhaps the Clone spoke nothing but the literal truth in her claim to be the Incarnation. But in that case, why is she dead, and I wearing her meat? An unflattering answer comes to mind: the Goddess finds me easier to steer. The Clone could have been tainted by the bloodletting; she could have become bloodthirsty. I feel that many of my realizations have been nothing more than the Goddess feeding me tidbits. I have worked my way around to the concept that my awareness may be a mere shell through which She operates, that the independence of my will may be in fact illusory. 

In that case, my qualms about pretending to be the Goddess are settled, and I can go about acting like the Goddess without reservation. If it's true? Hey, fuck it, I am honored. I like the Goddess. She has some old-fashioned ideas on a few things like cannibalism, human sacrifice, slavery and so forth, but nobody's perfect. It's a little late for me to change sides, anyway. As far as the issue of young people's sexuality goes, that's me, darling, and I'm going to use my little pussy, whatever anybody says. I submit myself to Her will, because She's great. 

Cynically, somebody might say that favoring Her would be expected of anyone granted another life, as I have been. Of course I have not finished grappling over the moral issues involved with the Clone. I like the Clone's suggestion of raising an anencephalic child, exercised by computer stimulation, as a genetically-identical target for central- nervous system transplant, if it turns out to be feasible. If, in fact, my own CNS transplant turns out to be feasible, which is not yet a sure thing. 

* * * 

10. 

The Plowing  

In the country, airship engines strained to tug giant plows through the earth. The scream of the engines drowned the grinding and crunching sounds the plows made as they inched through asphalt surfaces. Country roads were being recycled into forest or into grassland. The plows, themselves made partly of recycled auto steel cast on site, bit deeply into the fill of the roadbed. The subsoil which comprised the fill of the roadbed was not fertile, but some enriching minerals would be dusted on it from the air before the roadbed was seeded. Four or five hemp crops would be yielded by the roadbed before the forest started taking it back in earnest. 

The animals around kept their distance from the industrial noises. The barriers to their migrations were being destroyed, something they understood immediately. Those species which were obligate migrants had the killing pressure on them eased, as the fences started to come down. 

As the roads were ripped up and plowed under, plants could start to edge across their former courses. Humans were only beginning to become dimly aware that plants, too, sometimes have to travel over their generations. Life is movement, and barriers to movement are murderous strangleholds on the biosphere. Animals and plants, life gradually began to trickle through the great gaps dredged in the roadways by the massive plowshare. 

* * * 

11. 

Mourning  

Queen Baduccaa and I were on the same side in a lot of ways. I mourn her. My side is missing her. I wish she were not dead and that I had not killed her. I want to have her advice on some things. She and I were much alike; bar the Incarnation, we were the only two I know of to whom the Goddess has spoken directly. I imagine that she had foreshadowing events, like myself, earlier in her life before the Goddess contact, connected to it although non-causally. I think such episodes, waves of weird, are trans-temporal echoes, resonance shocks reflected backward through time through our lives as a reflection from divine contact. 

I called her Queen just by accident. Baduccaa is not such a common name on this continent. I picked it for her before her initiation. I didn't find her quite so striking at that time. I was concentrating, as I recall, on giving her a hard time, so intent on that I didn't allow myself time to appreciate her attributes. Oh, yes, it was her muscle tone that fueled my lust engine, I remember, the effortless precision with which she could position a joint to a split degree of arc. I thought dancer as I tormented her. My approach to that initiation was particularly thorough, because I knew this one was worth something, even though I hadn't paid enough attention to her pure looks. 

I worked B through annoyance to fear, through fear to panic and punished the panic, into desperation, and gradually eased the desperation into sheer exhaustion, before I would accept her surrender. I started fucking her as dead meat, but woke her up with acute pangs that made her squeal and jerk her ropes. Thus refreshed, she found the energy to give me satisfactory motion, and responded well to my liberal use of the whip as I rode her home to a really fine climax, and I let my semen squirt into the Bttomless maw of her orgasm. 

Regretfully, I realized from the tone of her voice as we spoke later, that I hadn't broken this bitch, that I still had more work to do with her to get her with the program, to get her will compliant to mine. That project used up a lot of my time for years. Obviously, I failed. B was sweet. She tried hard to be the most fun for me that any woman could be. She would give her all every time, but there was a little corner in her somewhere that the Goddess protected from me. Still, B let me feel more parts of her being, her mind, than I have known of any other person, and she knew this was a kindness to me that she didn't have to give. B gave me all she could, and if it wasn't love then I don't know why it wasn't. 

Things changed in our sex lives after she castrated me, had my sex changed and made me her slave. From the first time she used me I knew she would like to kill me. All the time I observed as she built herself up to the point she could actually perform the act. My will to survival must not have been strong enough to overcome my passive acceptance of my status and my fate. Also, I imprinted on B to some extent, though to reduce that effect I made sure Jennifer got me first. So I awaited my killing, eagerly absorbing all the pain she gave me as just en extension to my murder. 

The Goddess took my Bdy to sacrifice B. I remember the images my eyes saw during that time, but they are gray and indistinct. B had killed me sure. I was deep in shock. My Bdy should not have been able to lift its head, let alone stand upright. Also I have a tiny shred of memory of the physical sensation, the hot slick heart pounding in my hand. I think Inanna was keeping my torso twisted, so the cuts piercing the membranes in my abdomen did not line up with each other. I shall have to remember that handy trick next time my gut is stabbed. 

B was one of a kind, a valuable asset to our Order. She should have led the Triumph. I wanted to give her that feeling of being queen of the world. But she went bad, and she went mad, and she made me a eunuch, and she killed me, and I killed her, and I ask the Goddess, why did we have to waste that person? She was a treasure. 

* * * 

12. 

Tube Trains  

Deep in the rock layers between cities, moles chewed their way through the bedrock in rhythmic chatters of exploding sparks. Chips of stone of predictable sizes clattered back from the cutting rings at the front of the strongly pressed tunnelers. These chips were pulverized and the stone dust treated with hydrogen reduction to retrieve their metals. 

(It was industrial policy now to reduce oxides with hydrogen rather than carbon. The oxygen present in metal oxides now had to go off as water vapor rather than CO2. Industrialists were mildly surprised to learn that any oxide could be reduced with hydrogen rather than with carbon, but they were very sure the changeover could not be economically feasible. The Sisterhood sent loud messages alluding to whips, and the industrialists very quickly found ways to adapt reduction processes to hydrogen, and implemented these ways. They discovered that the criterion of feasibility had been altered, and entered the world of low-mass technology.) Through the first cutting ring thrust a large cylinder of the native stone, its weight Brne by its forward connection to the bedrock, when the material was cohesive. Discs of this cylinder were sawn, sliced and segmented before they fell, the stone trundled off for use in buildings. The first cutting ring was followed by two more to widen the Bre, to give room for the saws behind to operate. 

The tunnels were dug to transport people, goods, and the materials needed by industry and commerce from one population center to another. Magnetically levitated trains running in evacuated tunnels need comparatively little energy to run, and have practically no speed limits. They don't harm wild things, and don't pollute. The Sisterhood meant to channel a large fraction of routine human transportation traffic underground, to reduce the impact of human comings and goings on the surface biosphere. Most transportation needs the tubes wouldn't handle could be met with aerostat vehicles. The fair efficiency of rubber tires on asphalt roads had beguiled mankind for a century, but had thrown out too much invisible carbon. It was time to change the ways. 

* * * 

13. 

Reacquaintance  

"Seven Names, Cynthia! I am elated to see you!" Merribelle rushed forward and grappled the slight girl in a great strong hug. 

"So, Merribelle! I see you know me," Cynthia gulped out. 

"Know you, girl! You illness has changed you. You are not so strong as you were. You have lost weight you could scarcely afford. But I had heard you died. Since you are alive, I know you," Merribelle responded. 

"Woman, let me go. Listen to me. I am known to you, yes. But do you know who I am? Merribelle, Cynthia died," Cynthia claimed. 

"No," Merribelle denied. 

"Mer. Ma'belle. Tell me who I am," demanded Cynthia. 

"Don't. Don't do this to me again!" 

"Wendy. Who first laid whip to you?" 

"No! That name could have got into the System somehow. How many arguments have you lost to me?" inquired Merribelle. 

Cynthia said, "When last we met, you claimed three hundred fifty-one. However, I still mean to contest about three hundred forty of those." 

"Carl, you fucking asshole. It's you. We have got to stop meeting like this. Every time I see you lately, you are coming back from the dead in a new Bdy. You are starting to make me superstitious." Merribelle was crying. 

"Now give me a hug. Now that you know who I am," commanded Cynthia. 

When her sobs had settled somewhat, Merribelle asked, "What happened to Cynthia?" 

"It was suicide. A neurotoxin specific to the central nervous system. A brain killer poison, which did not affect the peripheral nerves nor even the ganglia within the torso," Cynthia replied. 

"Suicide." 

"She verified that the parts left of me could be put in her Bdy, then she moved out to let me have the meat. She left me a nasty letter," Cynthia claimed. 

"I would suppose she would." 

"Do you want the gory details? Eighty-four percent of the Consort's brain fit in here, meaning of course Sister Jezebel's too. But that includes about all the cortex. The optic nerves of course are mine, through to the foevum of the eyes. Most of the olfactory nerves are mine, but the auditory nerves are spliced. The spinal nerves all the way to the sacrum are mine. Everything else, including the solar plexus, is all hers. It was major surgery." 

"What about Cynthia?" 

"She called Medical exactly when she injected the toxin. A team was at her side in about two minutes. By then it was too late for an antidote. All they could do was maintain vegetative life until my brain and so forth were shipped down from Moon, as per Cynthia's instructions. She knew exactly what she was doing, and planned it perfectly. She consulted with the System on every detail." 

"So she did it for your benefit entirely." 

"Not as such. You understand she didn't like me a bit after she discovered my plans for her. She did it for the planet, in the knowledge I have the plans to save it, which she could not hope to duplicate in time." 

"Your survival is that critical?" 

"Yes." 

"Then why did you let B kill you after I gave you the out?" 

"I was blinded by love." 

"Mmh. I need to bring you up to date on current events here. Starting with Cynthia's status. Why aren't you wearing your pain jewelry?" Cynthia wore nothing but a large gold band around her neck. She held a wooden Bx which clinked dully. 

"Isn't Cynthia pretty? I think I'm just gorgeous. Is that what all this junk is? I noticed I had a lot of piercings." Cynthia eyed the Bx dubiously. 

"I know how it all goes. I'll help you put it on." 

"Ah." Cynthia watched Merribelle's approach with a slight smile. "So you and Cynthia were a number." 

"I'll show you all you need to know. One ring goes right here." She placed a hand between Cynthia's legs. Cynthia watched as Merribelle touched her clit. 

"That's okay, Sister Merribelle." Cynthia started to back away. "I don't think they would be to my taste." 

"Your taste isn't the issue, darling." Merribelle grabbed Cynthia's clit sharply. "The point is that they make you so tasty." 

"Ay, let go, Merribelle, please. You're hurting me!" 

"Oh, now you see the point, sweetness. Hurting you is the point." 

"Oh, oh, oh, ah-ee! Oh, stop, stop!" 

"Let's get your jewelry on now, dearest. Right now, this very minute." 

"Ah, ouch, ah, please! All right, all right, I will! Let me go, let go, please!" 

"On the floor, get down, whore, on your back." Merribelle bent over her contorted face. "By the way, do you remember when you pinched my clit in the airship hanger? It hurts." 

"Oh yes, ah, ah, yes you're right, it hurts, it does!" Cynthia, on her back, waggled her knees helplessly. 

"Your problem now is, I'm bigger than you are this time, and I've got you by the clit." 

"Oh, Merribelle, lover, Merribelle, please, ay, ah-yee!" 

After a few noisy seconds, Cynthia bucking and twisting on the floor, Merribelle was satisfied. "Now that we've remembered the past, let's put on your jewelry, shall we?" 

"Yes. Yes." Cynthia was gasping. 

Merribelle opened the Bx. "Here we have the quaintly named slave bracelets, with a ring for each finger and the thumb, with the pretty chain mail. Put these on. These are the matching anklets and toe rings, aren't they nice? Oh, now we come to the really vital parts, the nipple rings and the clit ring. This goes right where I was pinching, isn't that a coincidence? Open up your legs, darling. Don't be scared. If Aunt Merribelle wants to hurt you, I'll hurt you. If I don't, I won't. 

"There, that goes right in through your flesh, like that. The same with the nipple rings, where you're pierced for them. You see, these make it so very easy to give you pain, just by tugging on any of these little chains with a finger. It's oh so convenient that it's irresistible. Instantly, you become very, very eager to please, at the least twitch of a finger. 

"What do we have left? A ring for your nostril, one for your lip, and this one goes in your navel. The last two are of course your earrings. I will help you with whatever you can't get. These are the little chains which tie everything together. They dangle from everywhere to everywhere else. I remember where they all go, but first we have to sort them by size. The very last things are the pleasant little camel bells. We must have them on you too, so you can't make a move without jingling sweetly. 

"Yes, indeed, Cynthia, to answer an earlier question, you are a gorgeous girl. But when you all bedecked in your splendor, you tempt the dead themselves. See how it all focuses on your sex, when almost all these chains lead to a vertex on your central triangle, of your tits and pussy? It's obvious to the blind that a finger hooked in any chain will command you completely, that your obedience and submission are instant and complete. It's very sexy. You notice you have no belly belt, that you wear neither rope nor whip. Bth these functions are fulfilled by your pretty jewelry. Nothing at all crosses your lovely back, leaving it totally naked to invite the whip, if one gets a whim. Ah, you are a walking treasure, my precious Cynthia." 

Cynthia struggled to fasten the last few chains to her Bdy. She spoke piteously, "Sister Merribelle, I was led to a misunderstanding. I heard Cynthia was recognized as the Incarnation of the Goddess Inanna, which I expected would give her, me, a standing of some stature in the Sisterhood. Yet now I find myself outfitted as a pain slave, at your insistence. Did the Incarnation fall into disgrace? Tell me, please, what has happened." 

Merribelle answered, "No, Your Holiness. Do forgive me for not making your status plainly understandable. You are revered by the entire Sisterhood, and your leadership is unchallenged since the Triumph, which is considered the Incarnation's own achievement. What you wear reflects the Incarnation's personal preference, and your observation about being a pain slave is relevant to her sexual taste. You see?" 

"Aha! Do I see! Ma'belle, these fiendish trappings reflect the Incarnation's sexual taste, but as you must know, not mine," exclaimed Cynthia. Now resplendent in her full regalia, she stood, jingling as she rose. 

"This," reminded Merribelle, "is how we started this discussion. As I told you then, it is not your taste that matters, but that you are tasty. I am familiar with your Bdy, although you are not. I wish to enjoy it in my familiar way." She hooked a finger through a chain which hung from nipple to clit. 

Despite the slight bell-jingling tension on her chain, Cynthia grinned at her. "Merribelle, you are a real bitch." 

"But I am a bitch with a finger on my pain slave's chain." 

"Lover, you will have your fun with me. I promise I will be very entertaining, and most eager to please. You have me precisely where you want me, and I am sure this moment is supremely delicious for you, partly because I find it so distressing. But this moment cannot last forever. That thought will help me endure the pain, which I know will be extreme. As you thrill to my singing, bear in mind when it is over I will have these trinkets melted down into a great golden potato, which I will then stuff up your ass." 

Merribelle chuckled. "We shall see what the future holds. You are right about the present moment, that your pain will be extreme, and that it will be delicious. Kneel and insert my prosthesis." 

Cynthia knew better than to hesitate until Merribelle gave her slack on the chain to permit her to kneel. As Jezebel, she had been a slave to Baduccaa, the most severe of mistresses. She sank immediately, hissing a breath in through her teeth as the chain tugged at the ring through her clitoris. Merribelle let the chain ride over her finger, gave it a painful tweak, and released it. She removed the prosthesis from her belt pouch, and absently took her own whip from her belt as well. "Lick me first, child," she murmured with nonchalance, and stepped forward to straddle Cynthia's face. 

Cynthia vigorously lapped her tongue over Merribelle's vulva. The whip slapping on her back took her off guard. "Go on back," Merribelle requested mildly. "The ass, too. You know how these things fit." Cynthia spread the cheeks with her unbound hands, and craned her neck further to lap her tongue in the crack of the ass. The next whip blow drew a grunt from her. "Inside, too." She poked her tongue into the tight orifice. It was hard to get any depth in such tight quarters, her face would not fit. Another whip blow, another grunt. "Deeper." Cynthia struggled, twisting her face to the sides and stretching her tongue. She managed to push a bit more of it into Merribelle's anus. Waiting instruction, she poked it in repeatedly. 

The whip struck her back again. Cynthia jerked slightly, which shook her Bdy, making her bells tinkle. Merribelle ordered, "Now get the pussy, inside and out." Cynthia complied. She felt the prosthesis pressed against her shoulder. "Good. Now put it in." 

She lined the clitoral bump by feel, and inserted the vaginal and anal plugs of the prosthesis, her own invention in a former life. Lining the nubs to rub Merribelle's clitoris, smoothing the Bttom shield, and locking the fitting switch was but the work of a second. Checking the tendon cushions, she was done. She sat back on her heels, hands on her knees, awaiting instructions. 

"Up, sweetness. To the bedroom. It's up there on the left, see it? Walk very slowly. We wouldn't want to miss anything on the way, would we?" 

"Merribelle, I have to piss," Cynthia pleaded. 

"Oh, that's nice. Isn't that nice? I bet you enjoyed watching lots of cute girls hold it in as long as they could. There's something about losing control of your bladder that's just extra shameful. I want to see it. Six lashes when you piss on yourself, girl, to make sure you don't cheat. Walk slow, I said. I want to beat you on the way to the bedroom." 

Each step seemed to take an hour, even with the tinkling of her bells. Cynthia's shoulders were clenched, waiting for the first blow to fall. It came, however, down on her buttocks. She inhaled shakily, in her relief that the suspense was over. Then came the rush of pain to her ass, as the delayed pain was felt, and her breath finished with a gasp. She concentrated on not breaking her pace. 

A second stroke, high up on her side, also caught part of her arm. It jingled a bell. She moaned, finishing her step. Another slapped into her lower back. Her grunt of reaction interrupted her own earlier moan. Walk, she told herself. The delayed pain from the second blow caught her while she was recognizing the third. She was hit on the shoulder. She determined that she could let her voice go, any time she had to; what was important was to keep on walking at the same pace. Bells tinkled to tell her she was jolted, and she was jolted because she had been struck again in the small of the back. She started calling out her misery to the world, her tone warbling as the pains rushed through her. Her steps grew jerky but continued. The door was just ahead, the door. 

Some of her tinklings muted as she hugged her breasts. The whip plucked at her back. She wished her yelling would slow down so she could take a breath. The door frame was beside her, and she was through it, and she was not falling, not. Merribelle whipped her on the back for some reason. She couldn't quite remember, it was too noisy in here with all the yelling. Merribelle grabbed her arm and threw her to the bed. That was kind, she needed a rest. If it wasn't for the pain in her tits, she wouldn't have to yell so much. 

Pain in her tits. The chains grasped in Merribelle's fist drew her into full awareness. She was on her back, and Merribelle was over her with a blank face. She gasped for breath, as the gradually increasing tug on her nipples informed her that the pain hadn't started yet. "Oh, lover!" she spoke, less a plea than a proof that she yet could use language. This kind of pain would be relatively new to her experience, but she knew its characteristics. It was going to hurt, as it pulled every last shred of dignity and humanity from her. 

Merribelle drew the chains tighter. It was funny how her nipples pulled her breasts into silly-looking points. Then in an instant nothing was funny any more, nothing in the world. She sobbed out a rapid series of yelps, growing louder and shriller until she was shrieking, then screaming. Her shoulders had left the bed. Merribelle eased her back down. She was shivering. Her face was sweating, and she felt sweat popping out between her breasts. 

Merribelle smiled down at her. "Oh, Cynthia, we're going to have lots of fun, won't we? Try a little harder with your singing, make me think you really feel it. When you turn me on enough, I'll fuck you, and you'll like that part. Oh, except I like ass, and I like to hear you singing when I fuck you. It makes you much more active, you know? Now give me a kiss, to show you appreciate all this fun." 

Cynthia felt Merribelle's tongue probing her mouth. The softness of their Bdies pressing was soothing. Pain would always vanish, and be forgiven, but love would last, regardless of sexual roles and sexual games. This fact held the Sisterhood together. She rubbed a hand over Merribelle's ass. Merribelle withdrew from the kiss, breathing in Cynthia's face. "Oh, Cynthia, you are so sweet. That the Consort's mind lives in you makes it twice as lovely to torment you. I am glad the Consort lives, for I love you. There is no one alive whom I would rather share a bed with. To have you thus in my power is my dream. To have you in such a splendid Bdy, and already so exquisitely prepared for torture, is more than I could ever ask. Truly this moment is a high point in my life." 

"Then gladly I give you my pain, Merribelle. With perfect willingness I contribute my screams to build your pleasure, for I love you too. Pull my rings until I lose my senses, for all my agony is dedicated to you," Cynthia replied. 

Merribelle leaned over her to kiss her again. Cynthia felt a chain tightening to her clitoris, already tender from the earlier pinching. Then the universe filled with fire, centered on her clit. She squirmed under Merribelle's weight, but all she could do was pound a leg on the bed, so she did that. Her squeaks were muffled in Merribelle's mouth. The pain grew even stronger. She wiggled frantically beneath the other woman in her forced silence. Merribelle slowly and methodically prodded around the various parts of her mouth. She was breathing deeply, while Cynthia beat on the bed with her heel. "Oh, that's nice," she whispered finally. She did not relax the chain. Cynthia could not scream for gasping. 

"Let me get some of that ass. Spread it for me," Merribelle commanded. Cynthia, whimpering desperately, raised her legs and pulled her buttocks apart with her hands. Merribelle got between her legs and eased the prosthesis up to where its tip rested against Cynthia's anus. She took hold of the clit chain which ran down the leg to the anklet and pulled roughly on it. Cynthia yelped and scrabbled at the bed for purchase. Scooting her shoulders down to get leverage, she strove to impale herself on the prosthesis, to relax the pull on her clit. She could not get it in. 

She tucked her heels behind Merribelle's ass, to try to draw the prosthesis into her own asshole. Merribelle pushed, and it was in. Cynthia had received the rectum-rectification surgery with nerve branching, as had many Sisters, to make the rectum a more suitable receptacle for penetrating sex, so injury from a prosthesis was unlikely. Significantly deeper penetration was possible. Still, extreme depth of penetration by the prosthesis produced extreme pain, and Merribelle was in no mood for halfway measures. After pausing to work her way through the second sphincter, she dove for the prize. She knew she had found it when Cynthia knotted her belly and thigh muscles, and coughed out a gentle groan. "Ah, there we go, girl," she murmured in delight. "Found you, didn't I?" 

With her forearms braced in the backs of Cynthia's knees to hold the legs back, she idly plucked up chains from Cynthia and gathered them in her fingers. "See, this is how I like it. Now I can play you like a guitar, while you sing along. Isn't this sweet?" 

Cynthia didn't think so. The thrusting in her ass was not unpleasant. In fact, her nerve branching ensured it was sexually stimulating. But Merribelle wasn't playing it that way, she was pushing it in to the limit, which was most painful. These regular, intense pulses of pain from deep in her entrails formed the backdrop for a wide variety of pains which Merribelle could pull from her torso, even her face, with those chains. That Merribelle was deliberately playing her for the sounds of her song was bad news for Cynthia. Against her will, she yielded up a wide variety of sounds for Merribelle's entertainment, elicited from her by the surprising array of distinct pains Merribelle could command with the chains. The rhythm was provided by her involuntary grunt every time the prosthesis plunged deeply into her. 

Despite being in almost constant pain, Cynthia was growing quite aroused sexually. Her anus was literally an alternate sex organ, thanks to the surgery: the nerve branching trick made intercourse there feel like friction on the clitoris. Further, the mood set by Merribelle's playing on her pains was frankly intriguing. Not least of all, she loved Merribelle; when she was a man, she had been Merribelle's lover for a long time. Unless the worst was yet to come, Cynthia was going to hit her climax soon. 

Merribelle's own sexual arousal was obviously beginning to distract her from conducting her concert of pain sounds. Her thrusts were getting faster, and she was less intent on pumping a grunt of pain from Cynthia at every stroke. Her fingers grappled randomly at the chains now, producing moans and shrieks which were less varied, though at times more intense. She gave forth her own moans now, of pure pleasure. The prosthesis relentlessly tickled her clit with hydraulic drive to its nubs, each time its shaft moved through Cynthia's asshole. Between shrieks, Cynthia noted that Merribelle was perspiring, herself. 

Merribelle let her elbows slip from behind Cynthia's knees. She scarcely seemed to notice when the legs dropped to the bed. Cynthia now had another means to express her occasional agony besides her tiring voice, that of flailing her legs. She gazed at Merribelle's face, which was lost in abandon. Suddenly Cynthia felt herself slip over an invisible line, between orgasm being foreseeable, and its becoming inevitable. She gathered her courage and burst into speech. "Hurt me, now. Please. Right now. Hurt me. Make it good." 

"Oh, yes girl. Good time," Merribelle gasped. She clasped the chain between Cynthia's nipples and twisted her fist. The shot of instant pain was totally beyond bearing. Cynthia arched her back, lifting Merribelle's weight along with her own. Her scream seemed like an afterthought. Through it all, she felt her orgasm marching in, irresistible. Merribelle jammed the entire length of the prosthesis into her ass, in her pain center, and that helped too. Merribelle was unmistakably calling out her own orgasm. 

Cynthia had never before achieved exactly this balance of pain and ecstacy. She reached her slave bracelets up and stretched her arms around Merribelle's back, pulling her tight, tight. Her legs she cocked around Merribelle's ass so the prosthesis could not move from that exact spot. Coming together, the women rolled over on their sides, locked into one tangle of steaming flesh. Cynthia covered Merribelle's face with rapid pecks of her lips. "You have to hurt me like this again sometime," she breathed. "Exactly like this." 

Merribelle wiped the hair from Cynthia's face. "Oh, my little girl has just had her first lesson. You think you know Bttom, but you learned without benefit of this amazing jewelry. You saw how versatile it can be." 

"Oh, I was too hasty to condemn the jewelry. I'll keep it around for private use, even though I still don't think it fits my image. Thank you for showing me some of its charms. I'm sure you have much more yet to teach me. I did not expect my social life to take this turn, but I must admit it holds some interest. You, of course, you are just perfect, my love. I need never worry that you will act contrary to my interest, so that frees me to trust my Bdy to you." 

"Good. You will be staying here, so I am glad to hear that you trust me." 

"Yes, Mistress. I take it I have a new girlfriend in you." 

"Better than that, Holiness. I have a surprise for you. I think you'll like it." 

Jennifer walked into the apartment. She shouted, "Cynthia!" and started for her with open arms. 

Cynthia squealed, "Jennifer!" and leaped toward her. Merribelle snagged her with a handful of chains. 

"Just a minute!" she snapped. "Stop, Jennifer. You two think you know each other. Actually, introductions are in order. Your Holiness, allow me to present General Jennifer of the Order of Inanna, supreme commandant of the forces of Reconciled Earth." 

"General? Wow, that's neat. I..." started Cynthia. 

"Shut up, bitch," continued Merribelle. "General, this is the Consort of the Goddess Inanna, once known as Sister Jezebel of our Order, now haunting the corpse of the late Incarnation of the Goddess Inanna. The Cynthia you thought you were greeting is now deceased. Her meat is possessed by some five pounds of nervous tissue from that same Consort we thought safely dead, twice at least." 

Jennifer was sitting on the floor. "No. No. Well come here and hug me, darling, whoever you are. Let her go, Belle. Kiss me, little lover. Why are you so strange? Why won't you ever give up and die?" 

"Jennifer. You are beautiful as ever. How did you get to be a General? That must have been in the Triumph I heard about. I've only been alive a few weeks now, you know, conscious, that is. Sister Merribelle used up half that time to explain my jewelry." Cynthia pouted comically. 

Jennifer stared at Merribelle. "You bitch! You started without me, and the Consort behind those eyes? I owe you one, slut!" 

Merribelle said cheerfully, "That's okay, Jen. You can take it out of my hide. Well worth it, too." She ground her hips lewdly. "Let me tell you, our Sister Cynthia is carrying around some mighty sweet stuff these days, girl friend." 

"I'll just bet she is. Cynthia, why did you let her do that to you?" 

Cynthia laughed in her face. She shook her wrists, tinkling bells. 

"I see. Well, it's my turn now." 

Cynthia grinned. "Oh, I don't think so, Jennifer. Maybe later." Incredibly, she saw Jennifer's hand moving fast. What did that mean? 

Cynthia's face was slapped, hard. She stared at Jennifer from the corner of her eye, her mouth open. Jennifer reached out and tugged on the chain between her lip and nostril, pulling her head around to face her again. She deliberately slapped Cynthia again just as hard. Cynthia wanted to cry, just a little, but mostly she was curious. Why? In the Temple? What about the rules? What about the monitors? Jennifer?? If she started to cry she wouldn't hear what Merribelle was saying. 

Merribelle was explaining in a dry voice. "Cynthia, the Incarnation was not allowed to officially join the Sisterhood because of her claim to represent the Goddess directly. From spite, she decreed that the Sisterhood rules would not apply to her. She had a taste for Bttom, as you've noticed, but even more, she liked it rough. That you may take to include such things as forced sex, violence to the face and genitals, and other things you would not expect to see in the Sisterhood. She took Jennifer and myself Bth for lovers, and we all lived right here, together, toward the end of her life. 

"The two of us, Jennifer and myself, don't feel that you should be able to get away with anything our incarnated Goddess wouldn't. Quite frankly, we are delighted to have you in this existential predicament, delighted beyond words, if I may say so. If the Incarnation had any inkling things would turn out like this, perhaps she was more subtle at social engineering than we give her credit for. She has trapped you neatly and completely, and I'm sure she would be quite happy about it." 

Cynthia's emotions were swinging wildly, and suddenly she burst out laughing. "That is exactly correct! My daughter Cynthia built this situation for her dear dad, and stitched it together with her own pain. I am quite proud of her. This has the elegance and perfection of a masterpiece. Best of all, I admire her taste in women. You two are the very ones I would have chosen, out of all the Sisterhood, had a slave the power to choose her Mistresses. The joke is so sublime, I am almost as delighted as the two of you. I submit myself entirely to your will." 

So saying, she sank to her knees, then prostrated herself, face to the floor. First Jennifer, then Merribelle, placed a foot on her neck. Each of them gave her a token lash with their respective whips. The ceremonial nature of the strokes did not make them light. Finally Jennifer tied her own rope through Cynthia's golden torc, and pulled her up. "Rise, slave," she said. 

* * * 

14. 

Moon Science  

Over the surface of Cynthia's old home world Moon rambled an increasing number of people planting probes and taking samples. There were only a few years to learn all that would ever be learned about Moon in its undisturbed state, for in less than a decade the rocks would start falling. The plans were that no one would live on Moon when the rocks fell. 

Humanity would make the step to planetary engineering in one giant leap. It was not wise to be in such a rush, but humanity was not a very wise species. Back on the planet, the species was in a tight spot, and the biosphere as a whole was endangered, by the fact humanity lacked wisdom. Things were in such a squeeze that if there were to be a way out, it should be made ready just in case. Moon had an energy advantage over Mars, getting three times as much sunlight, but needed more spin. The magnitude of the project was staggering. Rocks would be dropped from the outer system to impact tangentially on the Lunar surface, repeatedly until the rotation rate relative to the Sun was about the same as Earth's. Higher plants were obligated to such a light cycle, so Moon had to be spun up before it could be terra formed with water and air. In physical terms, the work required was a very large number. Still it was a minimization, the most efficient solution to the problem stated by give us a way out. (The most interesting of the alternative solutions proposed did not require so much sheer muscle, so much delta- vee applied to so many megatons of rock, but they could not provide the satisfactory elegance of unmaintained permanence. Once humanity had spun up Moon to match the planetary rate, it would keep on going that way for a long, long time whatever happened. Our kind would have put its mark on the Solar System. Orbiting immense reflective sheets around Moon, or floating aerostatic shades in the Lunar atmosphere, couldn't offer such elegant simplicity.) 

There were still issues left unresolved in the plan to spin up Moon. One camp argued for a train tube to be built around the Lunar equator, to help spin it by pushing big slugs of iron around the other way with magnetic forces. The big- rock school explained that the rocks need to hit around the equator, and the train tube would sure be in the way, or else it would have to be buried very deeply in Moon's crust. The big rocks would make a mess out of layers close to the surface, and running a train down there wasn't a good idea in the first place. The train notion seemed to be losing steam. 

Regardless of the details, the word that most Lunar science, in the sense of investigations of a pristine Moon, would have to be done in the next six years, sent a lot of people scurrying to Moon. As in any activity in which there is a feeling of haste, there were accidents. Industrial accidents which occur in an airless environment are frequently fatalities. People died on Moon in the name of science. 

* * * 

15. 

Chains of Love  

"Jennifer?" Cynthia said diffidently. 

"Yes?" 

"I'm happy. I feel like, I don't know, maybe like a new bride." 

"Cynthia, there's quite a difference between a bride and a pain slave. If you don't know what it is, better not get married for a while." 

"Can I have another kiss?" 

"Sure." Jennifer drew her in by the rope. They embraced and kissed tenderly. 

Cynthia said, "Really good to see you again, Jennifer." 

"Good to have you back among the living, love. Welcome home," answered Jennifer. 

"What you got in mind for me now?" 

"Same old shit, kid. Sex and suffering. Might ask Belle if she wants to get in on this." 

Merribelle spoke up. "Yes, yes! That will be great for our family togetherness. I warmed her up already, Jen. Her piercings should be nice and tender. That should make her real lively now." 

"Fine. You should know the way, kid. March." 

Cynthia led the parade to the bedroom. The walk was much shorter without the gauntlet of whipstrokes. Merribelle said to Jennifer, "You know, she does know how to handle Bttom. She knows how to like it, too." 

Jennifer said, "World class isn't a brag, Belle. That cute little cunt has more sexual experience than the two of us together will ever have, in her memories, if not her Bdy. What was the man like before he was Consort?" 

"Same man as the Consort. I thought he was the best, but my experience was limited. I figured I was prejudiced because he was my man. I sure didn't know people would call him the best and mean it literally," Merribelle answered. 

"On the bed, slave. Well, a lot of that experience has to carry over, don't you think? Technically, she knows how to be Bttom, and she knows she has to like it to be able to endure it. That doesn't make it her predominant orientation, in fact I'm sure it isn't." 

Merribelle answered, "I think you're right about that. Jezebel was a submissive, wasn't she? But I had the impression Jezebel was hiding rebellion in her servility. I mean in her sexual life, we know Jezebel was secretly working against Baduccaa politically, on the System." 

"Jezebel was a persona invented by that sweet little innocent on our bed there. I think it was self-hypnosis, or something like. You could swear she was submissive all the way through. She had to fool Baduccaa, and Baduccaa was nobody's fool. That rebellion only came out too late, when she had a foot of glass sword sticking out her back. Sorry, Cynthia. But Jezebel has to be an object lesson to us. When we think Cynthia is all our meat, it will probably mean she's got us fooled," said Jennifer. 

Merribelle responded, "I think we've got a chance with her. Excuse me while I whip our slave." She whipped their slave. It hardly hurt at all. Cynthia II was too interested in what the women were saying about her to pay much attention to a solitary whiplash. 

"Unlike Jezebel, this Cynthia wants to be broken. She wants us to change her primary orientation for her, so that she becomes basically a female masochist rather than a man in a clever disguise. We should be able to break her spirit, since she's begging for it. At least that project will make a good hobby. Close ranks, General. I like to feel your Bdy on mine when we're talking." 

Jennifer came in to kiss Merribelle and stayed to caress her pussy. "I don't know, Belle, do you think we can stand it?" she purred. "Being so mean to that poor girl, when all she wants to do is satisfy our sex drives. Do you think we can train her to beg for whippings? That would be so sweet. Get her chains in your toes, while I rub your pussy. Hear that? She's a lot more sensitive to those chains than the first Cynthia was. Do it again. Oh, good. Now I'll put a little bit of my nails in my touch. See if you can make her feel the difference. Oh, yes, baby. She thinks it's a lot more serious when I use my nails. Hold her down with your foot so we can Bth whip her." 

Cynthia gasped out, "Please listen to me for a moment, Sisters. I don't have Cynthia's conditioning, I mean the Incarnation's. You can't restrain me with these little chains, for a beating. I am certain to injure myself. for my instincts have not changed to accommodate my piercings." 

Merribelle tugged her foot to make Cynthia shout again. "The little bitch is right. We will have to tie her down this time. That's something we will have to retrain her in. It won't take her long to learn that her tits and clit don't go anywhere when we're around, then we can go back to beating her with free wrists. Pull back your nails, Jen, and let me tie the kid down." 

"Oh, just sit on her legs and let me get started," said Jennifer impatiently. "I don't want her to get used to the rope before we get her conditioned to the jewelry again. We never had to use ropes with her before." 

"Okay, I got her, Jen. Go ahead and hit the girl." 

Somehow it was comforting to Cynthia to be restrained by flesh instead of ropes. The first few blows did not faze her. Then, as she expected, she started getting wild and trying to throw off her restraint, which was Merribelle. Merribelle had other ideas, and yanked chains until Cynthia became tensely inactive. The ironic praise that Merribelle gave her irked her, but it was better to try to stay still after the whip hit than to struggle against the treacherous rings in her flesh. Her song alone could tell the world how it felt to be treated so. 

Faith told her that every sound and every action inside the Temple became part of inviolable historical record. Personal knowledge told her things had better be that way, because that's how she had designed the System to work. She also had expectations that some Monitors could be appreciating her song in real time. She also had hope, but would never dare to mention, that her personal safety may be one of the duties of the King's Guard, if that agency had reconstituted after she had dissolved it to save it from B's enmity. Of course she wouldn't want them to interfere when she was having fun with her friends, to whom she had just sworn slavery. But it would be nice to know that their protection was there, in case the world held people who didn't wish her well as these two. 

She was startled to notice that her latest cry had carried an inflection of appreciation. It was a state-Bund memory, she recalled it now from when she was Jezebel. Her calls of agony now would have an accent which strangely sounded like a tigress purring. That meant that the pain of the whip had started to become soothing. She still thought it was a hateful thing in herself, but she realized she had switched to direct enjoyment of her torment. She squeezed her thighs together and worked the muscle groups of her pelvic region, as she waited for the next perceived flame to sting her back. 

"You've warmed her up now," said Merribelle. "She's starting to get off on it. My turn. You take her." 

"I'll take her," promised Jennifer. She was slipping her prosthesis into place with practiced motions. "Don't worry, I'll take her all right." She placed a hand on Cynthia's back. Cynthia laid still, not breathing. Had Jennifer been offended by her earlier refusal? There had been those slaps. If Jennifer were miffed, she would find out very soon. 

Jennifer posed her wordlessly. Fingertips under her hipbones told her to raise her ass. Slight pressure inside her knees made her spread her legs. She didn't need the reminding touch between her shoulders to keep her face on the bed. Jennifer put a finger through the chain which hung between her nipples. "Okay, Belle, hit her," she said. 

As Merribelle lashed her back, Jennifer hurt her nipples. As Cynthia shrieked and swam with her hands, Jennifer penetrated her vagina from behind. The mix of insults to her being in that instant was quite overwhelming, Cynthia found. She would like to frame this unique blend of sensations, and come back to study it at her leisure. Right now the yelling made her somewhat too busy for proper appreciation, but she knew Jennifer was using Bth their shares of appreciation. She knew quite well her nipples would not rip out. She was not scared of that a bit. Her lack of fear simply didn't matter against the intensity of the sensation. 

There is a threshold, Cynthia thought, the product of intensity of pain times its duration, after which the spinal cord takes over motor control, figuring the brain has shirked its responsibility. She was flopping like a fish, and one consequence was that she was stimulating Sister Jennifer, through her pleasure device, the prosthesis. She was moving very fast, and with each move the prosthesis was slipping in her vagina. She knew it was even possible that she was sexually roused herself, in fact it was even likely. The lower centers did not coordinate well under these circumstances. She was unable to detect any such feeling, while everything was being washed away by the tsunamis of shock radiating from her nipples. The brain could grab back motor control for a fraction of a second, but could not hold it longer. 

Cynthia noted her ass pounded fast on Jennifer's pubis. That meant she was sucking the whole length of the prosthesis shaft into her vagina. Jennifer was steering her pain, to keep her behavior well inside the limits of bestial frenzy; her reward was a jackpot of stimulation, intense, rapid, and continuous. Cynthia did not know how long she quivered on the lingam and bumped flesh with Jennifer. She knew she had to refresh her shriek several times with gasps for air. 

When Jennifer graciously relented her tension on the chain, Cynthia's first feeling was an enormous rush of gratitude directed at Jennifer, for stopping. Then she found out what she suspected, that her pussy had been having fun without her. She felt the chemical gratification from that rush through her, almost rocking away her enjoyment of being able to be still and quiet for an instant. Jennifer was still and quiet too. She knew her business, which right this second was waiting out a ticking time Bmb. Cynthia was amazed to feel herself erupt into orgasm spontaneously, several long seconds after either partner had moved. Jennifer read her like a Bok, and dived in with long, swooping strokes while Cynthia was still helplessly coming. 

That was exciting, but it didn't last long. Jennifer pulled out totally, laid beside Cynthia, and rolled her limp Bdy up on its side to face her. Looking down at herself, Cynthia saw the red furrows on her front, the chains had dug in her flesh. She felt Merribelle slide up behind her and she knew what was up. The general and the ship builder were going to share her together. That struck her as a good idea. Merribelle eased her ass apart and stuck her prosthesis right on her little anus. A finger tweaking a chain told Cynthia that she should back right down on it, else she would suffer pangs much greater and sharper. With such encouragement, she twisted her anus over the prosthesis, feeling it stretch her wide and poke her deep. 

Merribelle made a dozen short strokes to catch up, on her side behind Cynthia. Then she lifted her head to Jennifer and panted, "Didn't I tell you she's got some good stuff? Come and get it while it's hot." 

Jennifer raised Cynthia's leg and tucked the knee up beside her shoulder. She pushed her prosthesis into Cynthia's pussy without ceremony. Cynthia felt stuffed, with one in front and one behind. It was a dirty job, but somebody had to do it. Her camel bells tinkled merrily as she worked herself down on her twin impalement. 

* * * 

16. 

Questioning Religion  

Cynthia followed through. She flipped her chains in patterns with her fingers and said, "See, what makes a god automatically an ethical arbiter? Are they maybe the judge? A judge is an authoritative office, not an ethical auditor. So maybe they say they are the source of ethics. Their saying doesn't make it so. Ethics is so slippery that the whole line-up of gods and goddesses could stand here and not prove to me they had any ethical priority over contemporary human consensus. Can you beat that? You need a definition that all purely ethical decisions must be made non-coercively, which only makes sense. That way a god can't say, 'I'll make you believe my way,' and then zap you with thunderbolts until you say you're a believer. Decisions people think are ethical are made on the bases of culture, tradition, and the expectation of peer attitudes. Ethics is the evolution of customs. I go with Hassan I Saabah, 'There ain't no judge nowhere.' 

"So perhaps there could be a pragmatic preference which militates against our manifesting a strong Goddess in her own Bdy, at the height of her powers. Just testing the waters, that's all. Resolved, our Lady Inanna is an intimidating individual, come back at me." 

"Your Holiness, ..." 

"Don't give me that shit! That was for the last tenant." 

"Fuck you, Cynthia, you slut whore. I'll call you anything I want to, by damn I earned that right at least. Don't get all ruffled on me, child, because I know a couple cures you been aching for. Say when you're ready, they're coming your way tonight. As I said, your Holiness, to what degree do you feel such concerns are objective, disregarding our connections to the Goddess? How much chance is there she will do something to hurt Joe Blow in Kokomo?" 

"Jennifer, my lovely playmate, we've already done a lot of the hurting for Her. We kind of ripped up the planet on Her behalf. What if we decide it wasn't a good idea to bring Her back? We would have what's called pie on our faces, my love. I know this Lady maybe a bit better than you do. Let me just tell you this for a fact, to save argument. In Her own Bdy, She could take any of us on, and there's a fair chance She could take us all on. Somehow humans just aren't in Her league when it comes to conflict. You can either believe me, or you don't have to, but I tell you She could crack the whip on us if it came down to it." 

"The way you tell it, your Magnificence, I tend to believe you. So when She knocks on the door, it'll be too late to worry about what we should have done. Well, lemon tits, you sure are number one on my list when it comes to light after-dinner conversation, to sparkle up a sagging evening. If we have disposed of that topic, I have some diverting entertainment in mind, more suitable to the limited imaginations of military officers such as myself, yet absolutely guaranteed to capture the full attention of our resident genius. Shall I proceed directly to the entertainment, or would you like me to first explain the entertainment? I am yours to command, Goddess." 

"Hold on a minute, Jen, I think I'm getting something. I know you're ready to start putting the hurting to me, but listen first. Did B ever tell you I thought Inanna might be on a starship cruise? Don't answer. I told B that. I asked the System to work on it, and while I was dead it worked it out. Hey, sorry, while I was up the river, we can say. While my least sexy parts were swimming in liquified gases, whatever you want. You are a brave general, to climb in bed with a girl who has already died twice. 

"The System solved it, and the answer is officially maybe. Don't laugh, the solution was legitimate. There could be a vehicle out there, with the Goddess physically on Bard. By all our information, it's incoming. That means there's a star there that's not really there. What it is, a starship under deceleration blows photons all over its target system for a long time before it gets there, either directly from its drive or from reactions inside its jet. You can't get rid of your excess delta-vee without shining a searchlight where you're meaning to go. You can do little tricks if you want to reduce that, but a if you want to sneak up on somebody, a starship just isn't the way to do it. That means there's a star there that's not really there. 

"I want to put the System on finding that star right away. Yes, I'm sorry, Jenny, I do mean literally right this minute. You can never tell when a little thing like this might be important. Sister, our Lady scares me, and I know Her better than anybody else does. I feel like we're responsible for Her torts, in a sense. I know myself that Lady's live, and She's somewhere, but I don't know how to prove to you that those are any more than subjective impressions. But if there's a light in the sky that's out of place, it might be Her, and this world had better get ready for an entirely new twist in the study of theology." 

Jenny sighed and tugged lightly on one of Cynthia's decorative chains hanging from the clit ring, making Cynthia stiffen and walk to her quickly on tiptoe. "At your service, Empress. Just a kiss first for your loyal General, who not only must put up with your teasing, but with your dreadful taste in jewelry. ...Another? Do oblige me, Empress, with a little twitch of this chain, so, I can get all the kisses you have. Sweet of you to see the issue my way, and it gives your kiss a better flavor, just a little tension, you see? You can come off your toes, your Worship, I released your chain. These new proofs of my love I promised you must wait until you have worked your way back to sanity. I will remain at your disposal, Sister Cynthia." 

"Don't go, Jen. I want you to work some kinks out of me. I haven't got to full voice, it seems like a week. You need to remind me how that's done. I'm sort of in the mood, just a little computer work first. There, a report late last year of a quasar showing proper motion, and it has a matching optical source too. We have to have that spectrum. Did that hit the news? No telling. Don't ask me, I was up the river, the liquid nitrogen river. Baby, it's distracting for you to play with my chains right now. If you want to help, get them off. I won't even fight you for them this time. Promise. Hah, I didn't say cross my heart! Oh! Ah! Yes, dear one, you have crossed my heart. I am standing very still. I will be very, very good. Oh! Ouch, damn it, I said I would be good! Slip them right out and I will thank you for it. Thank you for it. Hey, my love, those chains are nuts. I don't know why the Incarnation went for them, nasty little slut. If they weren't an inheritance from my daughter, I'd have them melted down. They're distinctive, though. I never get carded any more." 

"Mistress, you are fucking crazy." 

"That's hereditary, you catch it from your clones. Now I feel really naked, without my jewelry. Anybody could come along, and whip my naked flesh. You won't let them, will you Jennifer?" 

"Certainly not, Holiness. I'll make them stand in line like everybody else. Have you got something for me now?" 

"Why yes. My hands have been getting in my way all night. Could you take care of them for me?" 

"Okay, Cyn. This is to make sure you don't get away, and don't hurt me." 

Cynthia whispered through her Bund wrists, "You gonna hurt me, Jenny?" 

"Yes, baby. I'm gonna hurt you now." 

"Thank you." 

* * * 

18. 

Habituation  

Jennifer asked Cynthia, "How much did you think of the Sisterhood as being your private harem when you were the Consort?" 

Cynthia answered, "Well, a lot. You had all sworn to be slaves to the Goddess, and I spoke for the Goddess. You all said you were my slaves, and you acted like you were my slaves. You gave me everything I wanted when I wanted it. I never pretended I didn't enjoy it. I must have been drunk on power, too. The Sisterhood was a force in the world from when we became wealthy, because we were rich in secrets. Our clout was clandestine. For a while I could do exactly what I wanted, and not be concerned with consequences. I had an unlimited number of beautiful women. I could make people vanish. It felt good." 

"Now I can collect back some of that feeling. As an anarchist, how did you reconcile your enjoyment of power?" 

"Oh, anarchists know power is addictive. I was aware that my mental state was pathological, but I tried to compensate for its bias in my analytical work. After the Sisterhood machinery was all cranked up and running by itself was when I let myself slide into hedonism and excess." 

Jennifer said, "Cyn, you're a dangerous individual. I see my duty to protect the Sisterhood, and everybody else, against your madness as much as I can. The fact that I love you personally is my bias I'm trying to compensate for in my analysis. Nobody can tell which way you're going to jump, because you're smarter than we are. We found out how B got control of you. I've decided to put you back on the same drug. When you're addicted, there will be at least some constraint we can exert over your behavior. You can't just disappear and go wild on us." 

Cynthia was quiet for a long time. Her face was gray. When she spoke, her voice was very small. "You're going to cripple my mind that way. B didn't care about that, but you want me to work. I'm just a small girl, not the same kind of threat I was as a man. Don't you have enough control over your pain slave, you have to add chemical chains?" 

"Here, smoke this." 

"Yes, Mistress." 

After a minute Jennifer asked, "You get off? You get your medicine?" 

"...yes mistress..." After a long pause, Cynthia mumbled, "...you know it's a very strange thing...the brain is very familiar with that particular flavor...these taste buds virgin to it...you did it, you know...you broke me Jennifer..." 

"Yes...Here's your next one. I'll be back in exactly two hours to make sure you keep on having a good day." A while later, very likely just when she said, she was back. She came up and rubbed Cynthia's face. She asked, "Are you happy? You feel all right?" 

Cynthia answered, "Oh, I'm feeling fit and invigorated, and ready for another refreshment. Will you let me audit my own dosages?" 

"Okay, just don't get obsessed with it. You can take an assay on every urination if you like. You have to keep your titer in a range where you can feel pain and react to it, because there's no fun whipping a junkie who can't feel it." 

Cynthia said, "Okay, that's no problem. I suppose I also have to remember what it felt like long enough to get the scream out." 

"Yeah, you'd know better. I'll keep an eye on your tolerance level so we can tell when it starts to flatten out." 

"Good. Ah, this is a luxury I really didn't deserve, but you forced it on me. Do you see it as just another kind of whip?" asked Cynthia. 

"It's another method of keeping your personality in a submissive mode. You're going to have to work with that computer you created, which nobody else understands. That machine is critical to lots of people. We have to make sure that your interests remain identical to those of the Sisterhood. Your addiction is too handy to pass up. 

"Here's how we're going to work it. Your medicine will come from this dispenser. If you're alone, you'll have to ask the System verbally for your dose, part of your health check. Use the fem urinal whenever possible. I'll set your twenty- five hour total maximum. Once a month we'll review your usage patterns and chat about it. If you need to be elsewhere, we'll make arrangements. You need to cut off consumption eighteen hours before a ceremonial appearance." 

"That's too long," Cynthia complained. "I'll be nervous. I can be clear in six, right on the finest edge in my behavior but not yet uncomfortable. Getting punitive about my addiction by withholding my dope needlessly isn't likely to achieve my best cooperation. Would you beat me as a punishment? That's amusing, because you know my future behavior might be skewed toward having the beating repeated. My pleasure juices cut loose when I start getting beat, like yours do, and that's why we're in this posse. 

"You'll learn that being punitive by getting stingy with my dope is also self-defeating. I can handle myself pretty well. Give me six hours before a ceremony when I have to officiate." 

"Okay, kid. I just wanted you straight, not clawing the walls. Remember who is here to keep you well." 

"Everything I've got is yours, Jennifer. That's counting everything." 

* * * 

19.

Celestial Manifestation  

Dear Jennifer, I think I may have found the celestial phenomenon we spoke of. It's kind of close; still years out, but not decades. I had to figure out what an incoming phenomenon would look like, then screen out everything that wasn't it. That doesn't mean that this is it for sure, but if there's a phenomenon out there, this is the one it is. A simple few months of observation would tell us if it's doing what we think it's doing. However, in this case, I don't think it's a good idea to wait. I'm going ahead with a few things based on the assumption that this is our phenomenon. Keep your Bots close, things may get kind of busy. 

It is difficult to put this circumspectly, but really there is only one way to put it. I have to go out there and meet our phenomenon and see what it's all about. It calls for matching velocities, so we will get back here together, me and the phenomenon. Query do you want to go interrogatory. I could use your company, and I am sure I will need skilled help. I can't let Merribelle go because that would leave Earth without an experienced spaceship designer. Of course, the world has plenty of generals, and Incarnations are a dime a dozen, so we're not critical. Come with. If we don't get back, we went out in a blaze of glory. Am I right? Your obedient servant. 

* * * 

20. 

Soliciting a Ride.  

Merribelle said to the Incarnation, "No way, Holiness. You command all the other space ships. You're not getting my propulsion test bed." 

The Incarnation played fingertips over Merribelle's fine breasts. "Oh, lover. There is a certain urgency to this mission. I need raw speed. The Clermont has the fusion tail Blted in and burning. No arcjet we run can give me the kick I need. I got you a set of mods which should give twenty percent more Bost. Fifteen, anyway. I need to take a ride at close to the gray-headed edge of starship speeds, and my window won't wait. Give me this one, Belley, and name your tradeoff. Try taking it all out of my little hide." 

"Fuck off, Cynthia. Your little hide belongs to me now." 

"You know, my Bdy doesn't have a single mark, but these piercings. Would you like to make my first mark? Put a hot iron to my skin, Sister, to see me scream and kick. Brand me where it shows, so the whole Sisterhood knows. You will never get this offer from any other Goddess. Does that sound like a bribe to you, dear Sister? Are we approaching your price? You want to mark me? Your imprint upon the Bdy of a divine personage, with all the sport of applying it. Think of the Bost in your social status. Think of the chip you could make." 

Merribelle answered cautiously. "Cynthia, I really wonder about your motives. You seem tempted to forget you are speaking to someone who has known you for years, in various Bdies, someone who knows the name you had as a baby By. You are continuing a game with me, a game you played with me when you were the Consort. In this game, you bargain with me over some minor matter, always for something you could obtain from me simply by using your authority. You have immeasurably greater power now than when you were merely the Consort. Very likely there is no thing or person on this planet you could not have to yourself simply by insisting you wanted it. Perhaps I find it distasteful that you should toy with me in this fashion after we were once so intimate. 

"Since our late Sister Baduccaa, I may be only person in a position to appreciate just how subtle and devious your mind really is. With respect, I decline your bait. I shall never put a brand to your Bdy, which would be sacrilege. As Incarnation, you shuffle the rules to your convenience. We mere mortals have to live by standards. You may take the Clermont, even if your use for it is to crash it on the Taj Mahal to see how the pieces fall. I cannot at this time allow you to make similar free use of my heart. 

"I am not offended by your sexual offer. I do feel you need to remain aware, how much of your behavior at this time is driven by chemistry. In your youthful Bdy, your passions shoot rapidly to extremes, and only drastic activities satisfy you. If you now want your flesh marked, you will find someone to do that for you, but not me. To protect my own feelings, I won't accept your ritual objects right now. I don't suppose you get very many refusals. You look really good, my Lady. I don't want to elaborate on just how alluring you are. The truth is, I am still in love with the man you used to be. 

"Let me explain something to you. The most treasured moment of my life was when you raped me without warning on that laboratory table, with our assistants looking on. That caught me totally off guard, for all my faith was vested in the formality of handing you my ritual objects in the privacy of my cell. But that day you just threw me on the lab table and stuck it in, with people looking, and I had never had such a delightful experience in my life. To this day I have never matched that orgasm. After that I decided any way you wanted to treat me was fine. You were always so courteous, except in lust you treated me as the lowest of the low, which to my amazement was just how I liked it. 

"You were right on top of my secret before I was, which was that I liked rape from you the best. For a while I lived in a dream world. At work, out in the gardens, even in the corridor, you would show up and grab me, and I knew you weren't teasing, you delivered. I would wake up in the night and you'd be spreading my legs. The nice part is we kept up our more proper relationship, with my ritual objects, and hardly ever mentioned the rapes. Honey, I was happy as a clam in jam." 

Cynthia was abashed. She rejoined, "My precious Sister Merribelle. You enlighten me. I knew I needed you, but now I begin to understand why I would never give you up, though I lived with the world's champion at applying subtle pressures. B would pimp for me until I was swimming in sweet young stuff, but she never wanted me to spend time with another woman of a strong will and mind. Whenever she greeted me with a sparkle in her eye and a kiss for my penis, I knew I would find a new virgin chained to our bed. This was her way of keeping my mind from the many brilliant and magnificent women who made up our Order. You were her greatest rival, I believe. Did you feel you were playing second fiddle to B? With me, I mean. Did you resent that status, and wish to displace her in my attentions?" 

"Cyn, you never quite understood quite how much awe we held for Sister B. No doubt you felt her glory was reflected from yours. Oh no. The First Slave was a thoroughly impressive individual in her own right. None of us would have dared try to displace her from anything she wanted. I felt rather you were endangering me with your affections. I lived in dread of my worst cold nightmare, the High Priestess appearing before me to calmly demand my ritual objects. No pain could have hurt me worse than the fright which would have burned me like acid, had she wrapped rope on my wrists. Had she lived, she would have learned that this was my special fear, and tasted it. No, darling. Things were as they must be. Living with you would have burned up a lesser woman, in all honesty. And without you to hold her chains, B would have spun out of orbit, and did so. You two were made for each other, and the rest of us could only wonder at your beauty as you danced to your deaths." 

"I see," said Cynthia thoughtfully. "Did you know all along we were doomed?" 

"Oh, certainly!" Merribelle exclaimed. "My love, we thought we all were doomed to death! It was unspoken, but we all believed the Order was a giant suicide pact, as we watched our split with secular society grow wider. We thought the world could not let us live. We waited curiously to see what kind of spectacular mass death the Goddess had awaiting us at the hands of the monotheists. We hoped only that our lives would make a beautiful show of protest in the end. We wanted our deaths to be visible, so the pigs could see our pain as we died. 

"I said it was unspoken, but actually Sisters of high initiation levels did discuss the matter. I heard Baduccaa tell her own plan, or fantasy, whatever. You probably don't want to hear it. She would have hung all the Priestesses in chains, in the Temple courtyard, all hopped up to the ears on stimulants to better appreciate our final agonies. Our feet would be in a trench filled with oil, and we would be wearing robes drenched in oil, and we would all burn to death. Is that her style, or what? 

"No, your Holiness, we all knew you danced the dance of death, but we thought that's where you were leading us all. We didn't guess that the Sisterhood would fight and win. That took us by surprise as much as it did the monotheists. But your turn, tell me more about the virgins chained to your bed. That sounds like a titillating tale." 

Cynthia said, "Darling, it was overwhelming. B was depraved even by Sisterhood standards, and we're bad girls. I don't know where she kept finding these girls, but she had an eye for beauty. They all wanted to be initiated, I made sure of that, and lots of them really were virgins. B would turn me on in her way, and she would go down on me and suck my dick until it was stiff enough to split logs, and she would whisper, 'Let's go in the bedroom.' So there would be a stranger in our bedroom, a beautiful naked girl on a chain, and B would maybe pull her knees apart and say, 'I'll introduce you later.' 

"I found that became my favorite way to meet girls, and the girls loved it too. We had a mutual fulfillment of fantasy. B would watch us, and murmur naughty comments to urge me on, to try to get me to go wild on my captive. Sometimes I did." 

* * * 

21. 

First Man  

Wayne wore his favorite jeans when he went to see the Incarnation. He had managed to get them washed. Out in the field for the Sisterhood, laundry was a detail sometimes forgotten by the Sisters, who usually didn't wear clothes. Only when the sheets got messy did they think about making provisions to wash textiles. The Sisters often tried to make him feel silly for going around dressed. It worked, and he felt silly, but he wore clothes anyway. Now he was going to see the biggest Bss bitch in jeans, Bots and a teeshirt. She would be naked, and he would feel silly, but that's the way life was when you weren't a slave. 

She wasn't quite naked. She wore her famous chains. She was beautiful and quite young. Seeing her for the first time, decked out in the splendor of her cruel pain jewelry, literally took Wayne's breath away. He had grown quite used to beauty at close quarters over the past months, and nudity was a matter of course, but this wasn't nudity. This was a statement about life, and a strong one. The kid in this excellent Bdy lived for suffering. As he took her hand, he caught a glimpse into her eyes. The depth he saw there told Wayne he was in the presence of the most dangerous human being he had ever known. The By was impressed. 

Cynthia overlooked the hesitancy in his manner. She said, "Hey, Wayne. I'm pleased to meet you too. I wanted to see you to find out if you would have sex with me. I've never made it with a man before." 

Wayne was astonished. He Bldly touched a whip scar on her buttock. "It looks like you've been getting your entertainment from somebody." 

She wiggled and grinned. "The Sisters have been most kind to me. But there's a shortage of natural men around here. They wouldn't let me edify a Worshiper, for some arcane religious reason, and they wouldn't let me go out on the streets for any reason. I wanted my first to be a man without a collar, so as a Sojourner you were right at the top of my list. Besides, I kind of liked your looks. You've got cute buns, and they drive a dick big enough to be interesting." 

"Oh, well thanks. I like your looks myself. I think you're going to get your wish, because I am definitely interested in sex with you. Honestly, though, I'm kind of intimidated by who you are. Aren't you the Incarnation of the Goddess? Does that mean I'm taking some kind of risk making it with you?" 

"Oh." She had a strange faraway look in her eyes. The two of them were holding hands. "I'm not emphasizing that so much any more. Don't let divinity scare you off. It's okay, it really is. The Sisters tell me what to do, I don't tell them what to do. If you only knew how true that is. Can you get over it, being scared of me that is?" 

"Sister Cynthia. I think I'll be scared of you 'till my dying day." He gathered her into his arms, and very cautiously hugged her. "You're a very deep person, and I can just feel your energy. You're way out of my league. But I can function. I'll be able to give you what you want." 

"Thanks, baby," she breathed. She scratched her long nails over his teeshirt, ruffling the hairs of his chest beneath. "You know what I want? I'd like you to force me." 

"You mean with a rope? Tying your wrists?" Wayne was confused. She wasn't wearing a rope and whip like the other Sisters. Her slave collar was plain gold, not the mutable color common to the other Sisters. This girl was different. 

"No, baby," she whispered. She nipped his ear with her teeth. "Free wrists. Fight me for it. Subdue me with violence. Fight me and win. Take it out on me when you have me controlled. Get mean with me, lover." 

Wayne swallowed. He felt a pulse beating in his dick. It was swelling from her naughty talk. "Lady, you're the Bss. But if you're not used to men, you don't know a man's strength. Maybe you shouldn't encourage me to go wild on you until you know what that means." 

"I'm going on a long trip. I want some bruises for mementoes. Do me that little favor. Throw out the Temple rules and get a little radical." Her nails were stroking his phallus through his jeans. "You just can't break anything, even my skin." She looked away. "My, uh, Bdyguard, won't let anybody draw blood from me, not the tiniest bit. But you can be severe without making me bleed." 

"Oh, now it gets more interesting. Would your, uh, Bdyguard happen to be those tall women with the swords, that always walk around with their heads in outer space?" 

"You know them?" 

"Just as much as I want to, let me put it that way. Honey, you are now officially the adventure of my life. I'm gonna do it, that makes it definite. I'm gonna treat you like I think you want to be treated, because this is so crazy I can't pass it up. Especially when I think it might be the last thing I ever do, before those weird ladies crash through the door and slice me to ribbons." He was caressing the tight skin of her slender torso, avoiding her chains. "This is just so perfect, you are just so perfect. What a way to go! You know, you're not very big for this kind of game." 

Cynthia kissed his lips briefly. "Man, will you keep on talking? Let me explain what I want." She located his balls accurately under the jeans and clutched them hard with her fingertips. He jerked and gasped as she leaped away. Then he stood looking at her, with his mouth open, while she flicked out her little fist and punched him in the nose with it. "Do you get it, Wayne? Is my message getting through to you?" 

He lunged at her. With a rustle of tiny bells, she evaded him easily, ducking under his stumbling charge. Grasping her own chains, she shook them at him. "This is all you need to win, big By. Just get a hand on them and you can convince me real quick. See how easy it is? Reach out and take them, then I'm your hot meat. Here, come on, I'll sing for you in a second when you get me, loud and long. I swear my song will be straéght from my heart, and all for you." 

He jumped at her again, but her foot clipped the side of his knee and he went down in a tumble. She Bunced a foot off his ribs before he could scramble to his feet. "Shit!" he exclaimed. Was he in trouble? Was she a trained fighter? No, he decided. She knew the moves, but she had to think them. She was just quick. He feinted to the left and threw her balance off, then he swept his foot across to catch her supporting ankle. She nearly went down, but spun out of it. He moved in. 

She dodged him with no time to look. The room wall slammed her from behind, then he was in her face. Immediately she smiled up at him. He blocked off her arms, and slapped the smile hard. Her bells rattled. Her knee thumped his thigh as he twisted aside. He slapped her face again before she managed to get her hands up to protect herself. He jolted her frame with a savage knee driven up into her crotch. "Was that what you were trying to do, sweetheart?" he panted. 

Her face paled, but she was not out of steam. She lashed out at his face, first with one hand then the other. His grab at her belly chains was aborted by the need to fend off her punches. She dropped to the side and tried to scrabble free, but he had her wrist. He jerked on it, skidding her on her side, then he dropped his weight on her. Her captive wrist he pulled up near its shoulder blade. 

"Good By!" she gasped. "Got me. Can you follow through?" 

"Don't rush me. You're the fanciest toy in the world, princess," he spoke lazily in her ear. "Give me some time to appreciate you." His free hand meandered idly down a chain which led to her clit. "Your jewelry is very tempting, you know. I want to use it as it was intended. You mentioned you have a song for me. We have time to hear that now." 

Very gradually, he increased the tension on the chain. He gazed closely at her face to see the changing expressions as her agony grew. She coughed out a quiet whimper, and drew a long, shuddering breath. Her clitoris stretched to resemble a small penis with a gold ring in it. Her hips slid to follow the pull, then when they no longer could, her thighs wriggled desperately. His fist tugged inexorably on the small gold chain. Her voice caught twice, then burst forth in a shrill cry which changed rapidly to a squeal. 

Wayne eased his tension on the chain, and on her twisted arm. "Good as your word, Goddess. I liked the first verse, but I know you can be more sincere. You're just getting warmed up." He nuzzled her trembling lips with his own. "You are incredibly beautiful, girl. How old are you?" He could kick himself. He knew that was a forbidden question. 

She ignored it. Breathily she asked, "Wayne, why don't you join the Order? Seems like you've got the basic idea of it. You even show some talent for it." 

He grasped her wrists and pulled her to her feet. "I get enough as it is, without swearing myself to slavery. I can say no to anything I don't like, and I don't have to have sex with other men. I don't get whipped at all. What could I gain?" 

"I see." She looked disappointed. "Maybe you don't have the basic idea as much as I thought you did." 

"Look," Wayne said. "The first time I watched any kind of Sisterhood sex, at one of the shows, I felt like jumping in to save the girl who was getting hurt. I know how stupid it is, but that's how I felt. That scene had a great impact on me. That man, the Consort, showed her no mercy, but she loved him. Every time I have thought of swearing in, the thought of that man tying me to the frame, and treating me like he did her, has given me chills. I don't think it's the pain I'm afraid of, but something else, something that's not physical. Maybe it's harder for a man to surrender himself to someone else's will than it is for a woman. I don't know." Her torment was on hiatus, forgotten for the moment. For some reason it seemed important to make the Incarnation understand him. 

She listened closely. When he mentioned the Consort, her eyes narrowed. Wayne suddenly realized Cynthia looked a lot like the Consort. Was he talking to the man's daughter? His hands were still on her wrists. He was courageous, not stupid. He looked at her delicate Bdy, festooned with golden chains. He wanted her. He knew the only way he could get her was to keep her controlled. Should he allow her freedom, she would thrash him disdainfully and dismiss him without a qualm. His only way to her precious vulva was to prove to her he could force her, by physical restraint or by so much excessive violence that she stayed subdued. The way of the Sisterhood was rape in ceremonial vestments. That was how the Sisters liked it. They got things the way they liked them, especially now that they had pretty much conquered the world. 

The young girl who had ordered the conquest of the world told him, "I have pictures of you at that whipping. You sure were nervous. You can see them later if you want." 

He didn't want to be surprised by her any more. "Maybe. What I want now is for you to take off my jeans with your teeth. What you find in them goes in your mouth." 

Cynthia whispered, "Persuade me." 

Wayne rammed his knee up between her legs again. She gasped and slumped. Holding a wrist, he forced it between her breasts until he could hook a finger on the chain running between her nipples. That secured, he released her other wrist and slapped her face aside. Taking her chin, he carefully posed it, then slapped it away again. As he lined up her face again, she stuttered out, "Y-yes master! I am willing!" 

He slammed the back of his hand against her cheek. "Willingness is not enough. You must be eager. I want you anxious to please me," he explained reasonably. He plucked gingerly at a tiny gold chain running from her earlobe to a gold ring in the corner of her lip. When pulled, it stretched her mouth into an amusing half-smirk. From her whine, she found no humor in it. 

"Oh, you're a lot of fun, kid. Wrap that pretty mouth around my dick. Do hurry, or I might hurt you." He let her sink to her knees, though he held Bth her wrists tucked against his belly. He sighed happily as she struggled frantically to open the waistband of his pants, by tugging at the cloth with her teeth. The zipper was fairly easy, but pulling his pants down by pulling at only one point was technically very difficult. He fudged a bit for her, by helping her ease them down over his hips. Once she had worked them down to hang by his knees, he considered her task complete, and stepped out of them after shucking off his Bots with his feet. As an afterthought, he peeled off the shirt, and kicked his clothes aside. 

Her warm lips felt luscious slipping around his penis. He peered down over his hairy chest to watch her work. There was a rush of exaltation which flowed through him to see this small beauty, the most famous and powerful individual in the world, Goddess incarnate, choking herself for his pleasure. She was good at this. If he was indeed her first man, she was a damned good guesser. Her mouth slid smoothly over the shaft of his phallus, and when she moved out she probed his glans with little fillips of her tongue, unbearable, excruciating. 

She knew too much about what she was doing. Maybe she had lied to him. He had ways to correct such behavior. He edged his foot toward her crotch, where she squatted before him. He located a chain, and took it between his toes. Her eyes rolled up at him, messages in them. He tugged her clit chain with his toes. A muffled whimper escaped her nostrils. Wayne moaned with the sweetness, pulling harder at her clit. Just then, she could make no sound, but her Bdy quivered and she scuffled her knees forward to ease the tension. Her jaw stayed fully gaped, as though it were locked open. The girl was good. She Bwed her back to align her neck, then jammed her face up around his dick until its tip was stuffed down her throat. Her nose nuzzled his pubic hair. She had swallowed the whole thing. This thrill made him shudder. In gratitude, he relaxed her chain slightly. 

She eased away, and slurped around the head for a few seconds, snorting deep breaths. Impatiently he curled his toes on her chain. She complied, again plunging her lips along his phallus until it vanished in her mouth. The kid knew her trade. On this pattern, they set up a slow rhythm. Wayne was careful not to make her pain extreme, for despite her excellent control her jaw might clench out of reflex. He didn't want to be bitten, so he kept the pangs of her clitoris at a moderate level and their pace slow. Despite his doubts concerning her divinity, he was coming to worship this girl. His groin was beginning to ache for a more vigorous stimulation. Fortunately, he knew where to find it. 

He stepped away from her tempting chain of torment. He tucked her hands in his elbow. The other hand he used to smooth her hair, with caressing fingers. "Hey, girl," he murmured. "Hey, Cynthia. Let's go to bed." 

She seemed reluctant as she let his dick Bb out of her mouth. "Sucking a real dick is fun," she announced. "It tastes better than a woman's prosthesis. Eating pussy tastes best, though." 

"Yeah," he said. "Let's go." He helped her up. When she was on her feet, he ran his hand down the clean, unbroken lines of her naked back. "How come you don't wear a whip like the other Sisters?" 

"I'm not a real Sister. It's a religious quibble. They say I'm not eligible to join." She nibbled on her lower lip. "If you carried a whip, we could use yours. But believe me, my jewelry more than makes up for my lack of a whip. It doesn't have the instant shock value, but its pain is sustained and very intense. Most people like it a lot, women I mean. Does it Bther you to have to be careful? If you want to get wilder you can hit me with your hands. I told you I wouldn't mind a few bruises." 

Wayne gathered Cynthia in his arms. The tip of his dick poked her navel, nudging a gold ring she wore there. "Girl, I'm really starting to like you," he muttered huskily. "Goddess or not, you're real people. If only you weren't leaving. If only things were different, we might get to be friends." He took hold of her hair to tip her head back, and licked deeply into her mouth. The tissues of her mouth were slick, having left their mucus on his dick. His hips clenched of their own accord, trying to drive his dick into her belly button. "Let's get to bed now or we won't make it." 

* * * 

23. 

Excuses  

Merribelle said, "Cynthia, I can't go. I can't go with you. I can't leave Earth without a competent spaceship designer in case Inanna dodges around you two and comes on in." 

Cynthia said, "Ma'belle, your reasoning is fetched a little far." 

"I can't leave Earth without a competent spaceship designer in case you two get marooned out there without a plank to build a paddle. Somebody will have to go out and haul your asses in. Before you get too old." 

"Baby. Sweetness. You think you're too old to go to space." 

"Bingo, you stupid shit. It's a matter of numbers. This chase is calculated to use a fraction of my future life expectancy that I consider unacceptably large. That's my personal aspect. There is also Earth to consider. It might be to the interests of our kind to have a viable starship industry before we get visited by a star traveler. Considering the exalted nature of our expected guest, it would be nice to have a way to get the fuck out of Dodge if the need arose. If she knows how to modulate time as a carrier for information, girlfriend also knows some other neat tricks. I might suddenly decide I don't want to be seen with her. We need ships. To run from the Goddess, should that be necessary, those ships better have legs, high acceleration potential. You dig? 

"There is a possibility that the Goddess, in gratitude for releasing her from her platinum chains, might swat you down like flies. Accidents happen after you've been in Bndage a dozen or two centuries. I'm not made of confrontational stuff as regards major Goddesses. She has caused the deaths of a few people I loved, as well as whole shit loads of people I hated. She scares me. I don't want to see Her in person. It's hard to exaggerate how much vacuum I want to keep between us. At that, She's by far my favorite deity. I just found lots of reasons for being very mobile. I can't come out and play. I've got work to do. Have fun." 

"Merribelle, I'll miss you. I was hoping for your presence to balance out certain traits in Jennifer. I fear she will be very demanding." 

"Tough luck, bitch." Merribelle kissed her. She tugged on a nipple chain just enough to see Cynthia's pliable Bdy harden into wiry muscle. "You sure lucked out on this Bdy. All these chromosomes are yours, you say." 

"Hundred per cent of my nuclear DNA, doubled my X chromosome." 

"You do a good job pretending to be a little girl. You are extremely pretty." 

"Thank you, Wendy." 

"I'll miss you, too, Carl." 

"So long, whore." 

"So long, whore." 

Each turned away swiftly and walked so the other woman would not see she was crying. But it was no use. They knew. 

Whither?

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